Pronouns

TC Name:  Sarah de Almeida

RICA Domain: 3 Fluency

RICA Competency: 8 Fluency: Role in Reading Development and Factors that Affect the Development of Fluency

Grade Level: 2^nd

Instruction:

I observed Ms. Danielson teaching prosody with the use of pronouns and punctuation. Prosody means to read with appropriate “expression,” and includes emphasis of certain words, variation in pitch, and pausing.  During the last few weeks Ms. Danielson has filled many posters with nouns.  She has four posters one for each type of noun: person, place, thing and animal.  The class worked together to fill the posters with the appropriate nouns.  She displays these posters for the students to reference at any time.  After checking their homework, she hands out an ELD worksheet.  There are five sentences that the students must edit.  She tells the students how many corrections need to be made in each sentence.  Students should be looking for: comas, capitol letters, spelling, and punctuation.   After ample time of individual seatwork, she invites the students to help her edit the sentences.  This ELD is nothing new for the students; they know what is expected of them during this time.

Ms. Danielson reads the new objective to the class and they all repeat it three times together.  Last week they were introduced to pronouns.  A pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun (he, she, it).  Today, she is introducing other types of pronouns.  She uses her ipad to show a School House Rocks video to help explain the other types of pronouns.  “Pronouns take the place of a noun because saying the noun over and over again can really wear you down!” The first new type of pronoun she introduced was special pronouns- which, who, and what. The second new type of pronoun was object pronoun- me, you, him, her, us, them, and it.  The last new type of pronoun was subject pronoun- he and she (these go at the beginning of the sentence).  Ms. Danielson shows another video on BrainPopJr.com that also helps explain pronouns. After the video Ms. Danielson models (I do) what she wants the students to do.  She projects this sentence on the doc.cam, “Sarah loves to go to the zoo to see the lions.”  The teacher asks to replace “Sarah” with a subject pronoun. Most of them respond (we do) in unison “she”. If most of the students respond she rewards participation not perfection with moving marbles from the jar to fill the good behavior/participation jar.  She models a few more examples, then they move to the individual workbooks (you do).

They open their ELD journal to page 14.  All of the sentences on this worksheet are question.  On this page the students are responsible for replacing the noun with the correct type of pronoun.  Once they have finished this portion of the task, she invites the students to get in pairs and read the question to their partner.  She wants them to change the tone in their voices to emphasize their question.  The teacher monitors the students by walking around the room and observes their responses.    

Instructional Setting:             

Ms. Danielson encourages all students to participate whether they have the right answer or not.  She wants the student to try to do their best each day.  She rewards effort even if it may not be perfect.  She supports each student and their personal ways of thinking.

When to use A or An

TC Name:  Sarah de Almeida

RICA Domain: 2 Word Analysis

RICA Competency: 3 Phonological and Phonemic Awareness

Grade Level: 2^nd

Instruction:

I observed Ms. Danielson teaching phonological and phonemic awareness with the use of vowels and consonants to help distinguish when to use a or an.  Ms. Danielson’s students know buy now what is expected of them for the morning routine.  They quietly enter the classroom, put their clipboards in the bin, sit down and take out their journals.  Ms. Danielson asks them to turn to page 12 with the title Use of A or An.  She does a quick review of the difference between a vowel and a consonant.  “What are the vowels!” she says.  The students respond with a jumbled sounding, “A,E,I,O,U!”  Ms. Danielson’s favorite response for the students to all be involved is the choral response.  She likes them to be able to wiggle and giggle and be vocal.  She doesn’t start the year with this kind of response technique she lets them earn it.  They all sing in unison a song about the consonants.*  As she is singing the song, she points to the alphabet letter line on the wall.  All of the consonants are shaped as orange fish; all of the vowels are shaped as yellow starfish.   
Todays objective she explains is the when to use a or an.  If the word before a or an is a vowel or silent h, then you put an.  If the word before a or an is a consonant, then you put a.   She models how to figure out when to use the right word.  On the doc.cam, she has a sentence that reads, “I kicked ___ ball over the fence.”  She reads it first, then they all read it together with choral reading, then she gives them wait time to come up with an answer.  She does a “pepper” type response technique to check for understanding and does not stop to correct the answers.  If she sees that there are a few mistakes, she has a student with the right answer explain how they got it.  Then she wrote another sentence on the doc.cam to continue with guided practice. 

Ms. Danielson invites the student to continue their worksheet with a partner.  After working in pairs to answer the next few questions, the students are to work on their own. 

After 10 minutes she invites them to come to the front of the class and share their answers on the doc.cam. This is another way to have students participate in the lesson and to check for understanding.

 Instructional Setting:

Ms. Danielson uses the before during and after techniques often.  Before a lesson, she does a review of: Know, What to know, Learned and sometimes Still want to know. She generally reviews what they have learned on the previous day and adds it to the current days lesson.  She frequently checks for understanding and will modify techniques until she feels that they are ready to move forward. She tries to incorporate as many songs, movements, and visuals as she can to help with memorization. 

*Do you know the consonants, the consonants, the consonants, Do you know the consonants of the alphabet? There’s: BC&D, FG&H, JK&L, MN&P, QRS, TV&W, XYZ Boom Boom!