Integrating Early Readers with Beginning Writing Instruction and a Digital Component

To combat this, I began to play the idea of integrating early readers to strengthen reading development of poor readers and beginning writing instruction with the idea of incorporating some digital possibilities for the project.

The requirements:

• time requirements necessary for multiple classrooms and grouping necessary to best meet students needs.
• imperative for the classroom teacher and librarian to meet, collaborate and establish goals and objectives for students to master.
• It will be important to consult local, state, and federal standards when setting our objectives for our lessons to ensure best practices are followed.
• It will be imperative for the librarian to introduce the new technology to classroom teachers and provide ample time for them to experiment with and address their concerns.

Collaboration between teachers and the librarian provides flexible groupings for students during beginning writing instruction to better support struggling readers and writers needs in the classroom. This will support early writers as they begin to brainstorm and collaborate writing ideas with their peers if they are flexibly grouped together.

Connect past experiences to future situation:

• Early readers provide all developing readers with extra practice in phonics and phonemic awareness skills that are quintessentially designed for the struggling reader.
• Also, early readers will provide a springboard for students to begin their own writing.
• Librarian and Classroom teachers will incorporate early readers when teaching the principles of beginning writing instruction.

Continued...

• In this unit, they will cover in Week 1: the Five Story Elements; Week 2: Ideas for Character dialogue; Week 3: How to build an argument; Week 4: Final Project
• The librarian will teach the students how to utilize the new technologies to assist in planning and in the writing process.
• This new technology is called "My Storybook" which will ensure students incorporate the five elements of a story (setting, character, problem, action, ending/resolution).

Lays out a plan for the librarian and teacher

• Introduce the integrating early readers and writing instruction.
• Teach and implement the digital new technology.
• Provide students time to plan with graphic organizers and write their own MyStorybook writing using the new technology.
• Allow students time to conference with either the librarian or classroom teacher about their writing.
• Provide time for students to make necessary revisions, before rewriting and making final draft.
• Provide ideas for tying things together with a student determined ways to share their final writing.

When planning any lesson or unit, it's important to keep in mind the principles behind TPACK and UDL.

Ties Technology, Pedagogy & Content Knowledge

• Technology is not implemented for its own sake, but because it enhances the learning experience and allows students to group more freely to better and assist students.
• The use of early readers integrated with writing instruction provides a support structure for reluctant and struggling early writers and elevates the barriers to easy the entry for struggling readers to strengthen their reading development.
• This grants teachers and librarians the proper medium by integrating beginning writing curriculum and using a familiar structure for early readers to develop their own writing.
• Also, the librarian will assist students in learning a new technology to use a graphic organizer to plan and incorporate the five story elements when writing their own My Storybook writing.
• The option to further implement technology with a final writing project at the unit's end allows for a wide range of student choice where they are encouraged to select technologies that best complement their learning experience and demonstrates their knowledge.

My final project pushes the guidelines of UDL

• For the first and second grade student, the writing process can be intimidating and daunting especially when the student is a struggling reader, particularly those who have not developed a strong understanding of mechanics, punctuation, spelling, etc.
• By using a writing technology tool, students are given the ability to plan using an online graphic organizer for story elements, create their own My Storybook writing selecting backgrounds for scenes, text bubbles for dialogue, and fonts for the text of the story.
• With concrete training and guidelines, assignments are clear for students which allows for executive function to be dedicated solely for processing writing and not written instructions.

Concerns with Projects in regards to UDL

• Physical and training
• Assistive technologies would be needed on a case by case basis to counteract physical impairments to accessing or using technology and modifications may be needed to put them in place.
• To counteract the difficulties of integrating early readers and writing instruction and new technologies, time and effort need to be put into place to initiate components over time rather than all at once so students can master each prior to moving onto the next.

Components of final project:

• Unit overview: laid out basic plans of how to initiate integrating early readers with beginning writing instruction
• Wrote and posted model lesson: Includes standards and is detailed enough that it could be followed without additional information
• Brainstormed and posted a list of summative project examples students could use. Focused on a diversity of mediums for students to share their writing and tied to UDL guidelines to give students a place to begin their own planning.
• Wrote and posted 2 model student proposals.

Projects importance and use in the future

• I hope to be able to work collaboratively with various other teachers in the school building.
• With various backgrounds in education, I can empathize with the challenges of other jobs within the building.
• By offering myself and the library as resource to the rest of the school, I hope to counteract some of those difficulties.
• I also demonstrate the potential collaboration between the classroom and library, one that is designed to target students specific reading difficulties and difficulties in early beginning writing instruction and how flexible grouping and the use of new technology can overcome them.

Continued importance for a librarian's future

• It allows students to read and be instructed by teachers and librarian to support further reading development but guide and put structure in their beginning writing processes.
• The students will learn a new technology to assist them in planning and organizing their ideas through the use of online graphic organizers to help them begin their individual writing.
• The evaluation process will be ongoing as students will be able to conference will either the classroom teacher or librarian after they have finished their initial "rough draft" writing.
• Then, students will be able to make necessary revisions to allow for them to complete their final draft for a second conference. Students can make reflections on their writing and decide what area they want to work on to make improvements for their final draft.
• This style of conferencing and student reflection on their writing benefits the teachers by providing a safe monitored environment for students to discuss their writing and ideas that can be used as formative data.