ND Curriculum Initiative

Subject & Standards

Needs Assessment/Rational

It has been my experience that classroom assessments (observations, oral reading, writing samples) indicate a need for reinforcement in the areas of reading and writing for my students. Many of them need extra practice in the phonetic sounds of words, which can be in their use of reading words or writing them. It is important that they get the basic background knowledge of these sounds, which has been introduced to them by this level, but the vowels in words seem to always be a problem. There are many rules to remember for vowels, vowel digraphs, etc. I thought that it would be a change of pace for these students to do more with books at their level than just reading them by using “Clifford” as a theme. It will give them a chance to learn more about Clifford books by getting to know about the author, what types of Clifford activities can be done to practice sounding out words, and how important sounding out words can be to get information about a topic or theme.
As I looked at the fourth grade North Dakota State Assessment from last school year, I found that students needed to work slightly on making or confirming predictions to understand text; they need to go from 76% to 77% to meet the state average. This would come from being engaged in the reading process, which is Language Arts Standard #2. First the basic sounding out of words has to be accomplished to move onto other elements of the reading process or in conjunction with the elments of reading.

Understandings & Goals

Enduring Understanding:1.Students will understand that being able to sound out words helps in various aspects of reading and writing, throughout their lives in a variety of things that they do. 2.Students will understand that authors write books for different reasons; they will also understand how to find information about authors and how we used “Clifford” books as a basis for many activities.
Goal(s):1.Students will understand that sounding out words helps in reading and writing.  2. Students will understand that an author writes a book.  3. Students will understand that there are many ways and resources to help with reading.

Questions Answered

Essential questions: 1. Why is sounding out words important? 2. Why should we learn about the author of a book? 3. How do different resources help us become better readers?  4. How is the topic of “Clifford” helping us read and write?
Objectives: 1. Students will be able to read a Clifford book and take an accelerated reader test on their own with at least 80% accuracy.  2. Students will be able to identify the author of the Clifford books, find information about the author on the internet, and compose a letter to him using the five parts of a friendly letter.  3. Students will be able to demonstrate the process of sounding out words when reading Clifford stories and responding to the activities that go with them, with at least 80% accuracy.  4. Students will be able to use the Clifford website link to select four educational activities that focus on sounding out words and will fill in a checklist after each activity to explain its main focus.  5. Students will be able to compare reading an online “Clifford” story and hearing the computer read the same story to them to check for improvement in comprehension.  6. Students will be able to select a topic to use in a letter and read the letter, as well as the reply, with at least 80% accuracy. 7. Students will be able to e-mail someone, with at least 80% accuracy in spelling words correctly. 8. Students will be able to utilize the information, about rhyming words, from a video and do their own rhyming word activity.

Assessment

What quiz and test items (e.g. simple content-focused questions that require a single, best answer) will provide evidence of understanding?
Students will be able to pick the correct multiple choice answer for each question on their accelerated reader test and on their online story with the missing words.
What academic prompts (e.g. open-ended questions or problems that require students to think critically and then to prepare a response / product / performance) will provide evidence of understanding?
Probing questions will be asked during the lessons and activities to get the students thinking about the importance of sounding out words in reading and writing. These questions will also get them thinking about why it is important to identify the author of a book or a story, as well as predicting why an author writes a book or a story.
What performance tasks and projects (e.g. complex challenges that are authentic, mirror the real world and require a performance or product)will you include that will provide evidence of student understanding?
Students will successfully access web sites to learn about an author and to work on reinforcement in sounding out words. Each student will also record their own audio book. I will use rubrics for assessing their reading for the audio books they make and for the letter written to the author. I will have the students do a self-reflection summary at the end of the unit. The items the students produce such as the audio book, the rhyming project, a copy of the letter to the author, the self-reflection summary, etc. will be items the students can choose to keep in a portfolio.
What other evidence (e.g. observations, work samples, dialogues, student self-assessment) of understanding will you collect?
I will collect a copy of each student’s author information sheet on why the author wrote the Clifford books and their letters written to him. The students will come up with a way to share their rhyming word lists, which I will also collect. The students will have to fill in a checklist for four sounding out websites activities and the main focus of each one. Students will compare reading a story orally and then having the computer read the same story to them.

Instructional Strategies

Students will use all three teaching and learning strategies. Clifford will be the main topic used in each strategy. Inquiry-based learning will be used to answer the questions “Why is sounding out words important?, Why should we learn about the author of a book?, How do different resources help us become better readers?, and How is the topic of ‘Clifford’ helping us read and write?” Inquiry-based learning will help the students get to know the author of the “Clifford” books better by reading about him online. Through problem-based learning, the students will be investigating different forms of Clifford website reading activities to practice their strategies of sounding out words. The problem-based learning will give the students an opportunity to learn that sounding out words is important for reading, writing, and spelling words. The students will use project-based learning when they each make their own Clifford audio book, which can be used with other students who have trouble sounding out words, as a reinforcement. In another activity, each student will be using a word-processing document to type a letter to the author of the “Clifford” books to let him know how Clifford has been an important part of their learning. The project-based learning will also be reflected in the items that each student chooses to keep in their portfolio, as the items relate to Clifford.