Thursday, February 18, 2016, Practicum Reflection:
My SA sat down with me to go over some assessment. We started with doing word cards and then went on to counting. Before she had me assess the students, she wanted me to observe how she does it. She showed me some useful strategies that work.
As I mentioned, we started this off by doing word cards. Each week we give students a few cards with words on it that they need to be familiar with so they can be able to read them. We have different levels for the cards, depending on the student’s reading ability. We have the students read each word down the list. Once the student has gotten each word correctly on the list, we mark it down with the date and move on to the next level of words. If the student gets stuck on a card, we try to give them clues. The most common was is of course to have the child sound out each letter. But for some words that end in ‘ew’ such as new, view, we gave them a clue that ‘ew’ make the sound eww so they remember. Similarly, words like saw, paw that end in aw make the sound ‘aww’. Also giving them clues like what sounds th; ch; sh make definitely help the students out and it sticks in their brains.
With the counting assessment, we have students count from 1-100. Often, students get distracted and do not remember where they have left off at. If they start guessing random numbers or completely freeze, all we have to do is give them clues like oh you were at the number 54. This will help them focus again.
It is great to learn such techniques that can help you see where your student is standing at. These techniques can be used for ELL and Non-ELL students, and even students with other behaviour issues.