Kappa Delta Pi Initiation

On May 2, 2013, several students from the Apprenticeship program cohort were inducted into the Epsilon Mu chapter of Kappa Delta Pi an academic Honor Society for Education.

It is a great honor to be inducted into this organization and I am excited to develop myself as a future educator and give back through an international organization.

ReQuest Comprehension Project

Introduction

            ReQuest is a framework that falls under the teaching method of reciprocal teaching, a method that asks the students and teacher to engage in a conversation and questioning of each other throughout the learning process. Reciprocal teaching is a method that asks the student to become actively engaged in the learning process and to develop concepts through active questioning and investigation. This ReQuest project uses the questioning method to engage the student in the reading and make predictions about the text. Going into this assignment I was worried that the student would not become engaged like the method calls for but she did. I learned that modeling my engagement in the book, and directly asking the student to ask me questions did engage her. It was a much more simple method to use than I had anticipated.

Method Guideline Adjustments

            When completing the project I did make a few changes to the steps. The student I worked with was my 3^rd grade cousin Lily. I was unsure about where she stands in terms of reading level so we had a brief conversation about what books are easy to read and which ones are difficult for her to read. I found a book at home, Stuart Little, by E.B. White, that I thought would be new to her and we talked about it before we started reading. She said that she remembered reading a few pages of the book once before. I asked if it was easy, hard or somewhere in the middle. She said somewhere in the middle. What I found from listening to her read the first chapter was that it most likely was at the instructional level. She had to pause several times to decode unfamiliar words. I observed her using several strategies while reading that allowed her to read fluently and decode most unfamiliar words with ease. Talking about her reading level as well as the question/answer method we were going to use was a great way to start this activity with Lily. She told me about asking questions and responding in her classroom with her teacher.

Transcription of the Activity

Lily: “Chapter 1. When Mrs. Frederick C. Little’s second son arrived, everybody noticed that he was not much bigger than a mouse. The truth of the matter was, the baby looked very much like a mouse in everyway. He was only about two inches high; and he had a mouse’s sharp nose, a mouse’s tail, a mouse’s whiskers, and the pleasant, shy manner of a mouse. Before he was many days old he was not only looking like a mouse but acting like one, too –wearing a gray hat and carrying a small cane. Mr. and Mrs. Little named him Stuart, and Mr. Little made him a tiny bed out of four clothes-pins and a [pause]”

Chelsey: “cigarette”

Lily: “cigarette box.

            Unlike most babies, Stuart could walk as soon as he was born. When he was a week old he could climb lamps by shinnying up the cord. Mrs. Little saw right away that the infant clothes she has provided were unsuitable, and she set to work and made him a fine little blue worsted suit with the patch pockets in which he could keep his handkerchief, his money and his keys. Every morning, before Stuart dressed, Mrs. Little went into his room and weighed him on a small scale which was really meant for weighing letters. At birth Stuart could have been sent by first class mail for three cents, but his parents preferred to keep him rather than send him away;

Chelsey: “ok hang on, what does that mean? What does it mean when they say they could have sent Stuart for only three cents?”

Lily: “ send him in the mail for three cents to mail him”

Chelsey: “right, do you know why it would only cost three cents to mail Stuart?”

Lily: “no”

Chelsey: “Because Stuart is so small it would not cost very much to mail him. Mail is weighed and depending on how much a package costs you pay to send them and since Stuart is so small it would only cost three cents to send him.”

Lily: “his parents preferred to keep him rather than send him away; and when at the age of a month, he was gained only a third of an ounce,

Lily: “That’s so small” “his mother was so worried she sent for the doctor.

            The doctor was delighted with Stuart and said that it was very unusually for an American family to have a mouse. He took Stuart’s temperature and found that it was 98.6, which is normal for a mouse. He also examined Stuart’s chest and heart and looked into his ears solemnly with a flashlight. (Not every doctor can look into a mouse’s ear without laughing.) Everything seemed to be all right, and Mrs. Little was pleased to get such a good report. ‘Feed him up!’ said the doctor cheerfully, as he left.

            The home of the Little family was a pleasant place near a park in New York City. In the mornings the sun streamed in through the east windows, and all the Little’s were up early as a general rule. Stuart was a great help to his parents, and to his older brother George, because of his small size and because he could do things that a mouse can do and was agreeable about doing them. One day when Mrs. Little was washing out the bathtub after Mr. Little ad taken a bath, she lost a ring off her finger and was horrified to discover that it had fallen down the drain.

‘What had I better do?’ she cried, trying to keep the tears back.

            ‘If I were you,’ said George, ‘I should bend a hairpin in the shape of a fishhook and tie it onto a piece of string and try to fish the ring out with it.’ So Mrs. Little found a piece of string and a hairpin, and for about a half-hour she fished for the ring; but it was dark down the drain and the hook always seemed to catch on something before she could get it down where the ring was.

Chelsey: “Why was Mrs. Little crying?”

Lily: “Because her ring fell off and went down the drain.”

Chelsey: “What do you think might happen next, do you think Stuart might be able to help Mrs. Little get the ring back?”

Lily: “I think they might take the piped apart and stick something else down there to get it, or maybe, Stuart is really small so he could probably fit down the drain to get the ring”

Chelsey: “Ok lets find out”

Lily: “‘What luck?’ inquired Mr. Little, coming into the bathroom.

            “No luck at all,’ said Mrs. Little. ‘The ring is so far down I can’t fish it up.’

            ‘Why don’t we send Stuart down after it?’ suggested Mr. Little. ‘How about it, Stuart, would you like to try?’

            ‘Yes, I would,’ Stuart replied, ‘but I think I’d better get into my old pants. I imagine it’s wet down there.’

Lily: “Why did Stuart have to put on his old pants?”

Chelsey: “He didn’t want them to get dirty. Does your mom ever tell you or Evan not to play outside in a certain outfit or in new clothes?

Lily: “yes, sometimes, so we don’t get grass stains or ruin our new stuff”

Chelsey: “That’s right, that’s why Stuart is changing his pants, he doesn’t want to get stuff all over his good pair, maybe he only has a couple pairs of pants”

Lily: ‘It’s all of that,” said George, who was a trifle annoyed that his hook idea hadn’t worked. So Stuart slipped into his old pants and prepared to go down the drain after the ring. He decided to carry the string along with im, leaving one end in charge of his father. ‘When I jerk three times on the string, pull me up,’ he said. And while Mr. Little knelt in the tub, Stuart slid easily down the drain and was lost to view. In a minute or so, there came three quick jerks on the string, and Mr. Little carefully hauled it up. There, at the end, was Stuart, with the ring safely around his neck.

            ‘Of, my brave little son,’ said Mrs. Little proudly, as she kissed Stuart and thanked him.

            ‘How was it down there?’ asked Mr. Little, who was always curious to know about places he had never been to.

            ‘It was alright,” said Stuart.

            But the truth was the drain had made him very slimy, and it was necessary for him to take a bath and sprinkle himself with a bit of his mother’s violet water before he felt himself again. Everybody in the family thought he had been awfully good about the whole thing.”

Chelsey: “Good job Lily, do you have any other questions about the chapter?”

Lily: “No, can we read chapter two?”

Chelsey: “yes but first can you retell me what happened in chapter one?”

Lily: “Well first Stuart was born and he was really small. His mom was worried about him being so tiny so the doctor came but he said Stuart was fine. Then his mom lost her ring in the tub and couldn’t get it back out so Stuart had to go down on a string and get it for her.”

Chelsey: “Great job, lets read chapter two.”

Reflection

Reflecting back on this activity I think that this is a method I will use often in my classroom. I do not see myself sitting down individually with students and recording a question/answer session with each of them often but the concept of engaging the students through questions, responses & prediction seems to be a method that will be useful in any elementary school classroom. I think that this method of instruction allows for a great deal of flexibility. During the time I spent with Lily we did not formally ask questions but rather discussed the book and responded to each other’s comments. Lily knew that I was expecting her to think of questions and she would stop me from reading when she thought of one to ask. Most of her questions were related to words or ideas that were foreign to her which showed me that she was not just listening to me read or just reading the words on the page but instead she was processing the text and comprehending what we were reading. I believe this activity was successful and will be helpful for me when I am teaching young students to develop comprehension strategies.

Strategy List

I can do the following to help me ask questions while I read:

1.     Write down notes about important information from the story/text on sticky notes and put them in the book

2.     Stop and tell myself what just happened in the book at the end of the page

3.     When someone in the story asks a question think about what the answer might be before continuing to read