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Grade 4
I remember it was 4th grade that leveled reading was first introduced. I was not placed at the same level as my friends were. I was in a lower reading group and I was very aware that I was on the lower side of the classroom when I compared books with my classmates. It made my self confidence lower. On the other hand my teacher would have us read plays in our groups and present them and I really liked doing that, mainly because the parents were invited and I got to read for my Mom. -
Grade 5
Grade 5 was a fun year for me because I had a teacher that kept the learning really engaging. She would find a lot of songs and relate them to the material. My favorite one was the Yankee Doodle preposition song. I still remember it to this day. -
Grade 6
This year was enjoyable for me, because the book we read was A Raisin in the Sun, which is a book written in only play format. I really enjoyed this book because the teacher would assign people that volunteered certain characters to be for that day and they read those lines. The next day the teacher would switch up the readers. I thought it was really fun and refreshing from the usual ways I had read books for school in the pervious years. -
Grade 7
During grade 7 learning to write 5 paragraph essays was a big topic of the year. We read Lord of the Flies and I really did not connect with the story. I struggled to read the chapters at home and stay focused so I had a hard time keeping up with the class discussions on the book, but I did annotate and highlight. When the time came to write the final essay on the book I scored the highest on the essay out of the class and I had felt my confidence come back slowly after that happened. -
Grade 8
Grade 8 we had to memorize a monologue. That was the first time I had ever tried to do something like this. We would spend class time practicing and going over different methods of memorizing. I struggled with this because memorizing something word for word was not for me. When it was my turn to present, I did fairly well but I had added or taken out some words in the process. I did not score too well on that. -
Professional Goals
-Make sure to find ways to keep the students engaged in the reading
-Make sure to give at least two options that let students choose the way they want to demonstrate their understanding
-Assess how my students feel about reading so I can better help their reading experience in the classroom
-Switch up groups often
-Break up reading and writing steps for my students and make sure it is routine for them by the end of the school year