Dear Mr. and Mrs. X,
From working with your child, I have learned a lot about him. I am writing to you to explain to you his literacy learning and needs, as well as some ideas I have to enhance M‘s learning.
Overall, I feel that the most beneficial thing to do right now is to differentiate the process of literacy instruction. I feel like M does not need me to modify the content (the “what” of teaching) or the product (end result), as much as he needs a different “how.” I will therefore group students for instruction and choose reading materials at appropriate levels of difficulty. I will also make decisions about involving students in activities that allow them to process what they’re learning through oral, written, or visual means. M really needs to feel comfortable in order to learn. He is very shy and is only just starting to cooperate and work with me. In the past few months, I have found out that more learning seems to take place in a smaller, quieter setting than the whole class. I will be setting up “literacy centers” in the class. These centers will contain meaningful, purposeful literacy activities that students can work at in small groups. In relation to this, I will also have a “quiet corner”, in the back of the room where I will place headphones to drown out noise. M can choose to do his work here any time he would like, if the setting of the whole class becomes overwhelming.
M is still struggling a little in his reading and writing. He is struggling with reading fluency, so I plan to incorporate high-frequency words that he does not yet know into my lessons. I will also allow M to read texts quietly before reading them aloud. Finally, in one of the literacy centers, I will use choral reading in small groups. This should help him feel more comfortable if his is not the only voice. He will also begin to learn from his peers. M really enjoys looking at the pictures in texts, so I will make sure to let him look through a book before reading it, especially since this is a great pre-reading exercise - to predict what might happen in the text. However, M is having a difficult time with comprehension skills. So, in order to help him draw inferences and do higher-level thinking, I will occasionally read books aloud to him instead of having him read it. I will also do think-alouds to model these skills. As a class, we will hold literature discussions about what we read.
I am curious about M’s writing in English, his native language. In the Spanish Immersion Program, we say that all work must be in Spanish, but this is his second language. I plan to do some assessments to gain a better understanding of his writing in English. M has very little motivation to do any writing assignments. Since he often refuses to write, I plan to conference with him to determine and address the problem. I would also like to try to have him write a collaborative composition with a small group or a partner. I will also work to brainstorm ideas with your student during prewriting to hopefully find something engaging and interesting to him. I will be focusing a lot of my writing lessons on sentence structure, capitalization and punctuation, and grammar. I want all of my students to feel comfortable and confident with these components of their writing. We will also be spending a lot of time with proofreading and editing and revising their written works.
I would also like to have frequent conferences with M to see how he is feeling about reading and writing. I will ask questions about what he is learning, what is easy and hard, and what he might want to learn. In working with your child, besides differentiating instruction, I plan to use appropriate instructional materials. I will also push myself to continue to grow professionally in order to expand my expertise and I feel that collaborating with literacy coaches and other teachers is very important as well.
Please contact me if you have any questions or concerns about M’s literacy learning!
Sincerely,
Srta. Williams
Dear Mr. and Mrs. B,
ReplyDeleteI am overjoyed to have the opportunity to work with O this year. She is a pleasure to have in class and has made great leaps in her literacy learning, especially in the areas of comprehension and genre knowledge.
One area that O could still use some work on is spelling. She struggles a lot on spelling tests, often getting less than half of the words correct. In her writing, O also spells many words incorrectly and that sometimes gets in the way of meaning. I think that the best way to help O may be to change the instruction that I give her in minor ways.
First, I will encourage O to read more. She has told me that she likes reading, and I feel that reading is the best way for her to encounter new words and recognize how they are spelled, as well as to recognize patterns in spelling. We currently do 15 minutes of reading a day, but I will try to incorporate more time to read in other subject areas besides language arts, since I feel this will be beneficial for many of the students, O included.
Next, I will be teaching a minilesson about proofreading and using a dictionary to O and a couple of other students who are struggling with the same concepts. The proofreading lesson may help O to catch spelling mistakes that she may have made simply from writing too quickly. She will most likely be able to correct some errors when she rereads her writing. The dictionary lesson will give O a procedure to use when she does not know how to spell a word and will give her an important resource that she can use for the rest of her life.
Finally, I will incorporate more writing and proofreading exercises into our classroom. The best way for a students’ writing to improve is for them to practice writing. I will start a ten minute journal writing time every day that will give O more opportunities to improve her spelling. Once a week, I will have the students proofread each other’s writing. I will make sure to pay close attention to the student proofreading O’s paper, to make sure that they are correcting her spelling while still encouraging the outstanding ideas behind her writing.
I am looking forward to O’s continued growth in literacy and am glad to have the opportunity to personalize her instruction. If you have any questions or concerns about her literacy learning, feel free to contact me at (phone number).
Sincerely,
Ms. Stephens
I'm not sure if I'm supposed to write my own letter or just respond, so I'm going to respond. I really like what you came up with in your letter. It is so so important for parents and teachers to be able to communicate and for parents to know what is going on in school.
ReplyDeleteI think it might be good to start off the letter with more positives about the student so the parents and guardians don't feel like their child is being attacked.
I also think that it is important to include things that the parents and guardians can do at home to help the students with what you want the students to work on more.