Professional Development Dossier (PDD)

Teacher Licensure Number:

Professional Development Dossier (PDD)

Vicki Cornejo

Submitted to:

Dr. Rick Meyer

Dr. Penny Pence

Dr. Yoo Kyung Sung

In Partial Fulfillment of Masters in

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies

University of New Mexico

Strand C: Professional Learning

I. Examining and Implementing Change

A.In the fall of 2013, I began a master’s degree program at the University of New Mexico in Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies (LLSS) with a focus in Literacy. Throughout the program I have learned many things that have influenced my teaching. In the beginning of this program, I took a course that discussed a variety of issues that the LLSS program covers. In this course, I was introduced to the idea of critical literacy. Critical literacy is the ability to read texts in an active, reflective manner in order to better understand power, inequality, and injustice in human relationships (Coffey 2008). I was very intrigued by critical literacy and though we discussed it in this course, I knew I needed to know more about it and how I could use it in my kindergarten classroom. The following semester I enrolled in a class that was dedicated to critical literacy. This class was an in-depth look at critical literacy and the various aspects of it. We spent a significant amount of time looking at the different components of critical literacy, as well as exploring critical literacy in our own lives. After learning more about critical literacy, I knew that I needed to incorporate it into my classroom. During this course I was encouraged to begin to use critical literacy in my classroom

My goal during and after taking this class was to incorporate critical literacy into my everyday practices. As I incorporate it more into my classroom, I feel that I am getting more and more comfortable at using it.

B. Through my journey with critical literacy, I learned that sometimes you just have to try things out in your classroom and figure it out while doing it to be able to learn from what you did and how it went. That is what I had to do with critical literacy. I just had to dive in head first and figure it out as I went. I was very nervous to try it in my classroom at first, but my advisor told me that it can be as simple as asking the question, “What do you think?” - And that’s exactly what I did; I started from that question and then I was able to inquire more with the students based on their answers from that very simple question. I also was able to find some examples of questions to ask when discussing a book using a critical literacy framework (Illustration 3). These questions have also helped me to negotiate through a text.

After reading the article, Using Read-Alouds with Critical Literacy, Literature in K-3 Classrooms (Author Date) (Resource 1), I learned that it is important to be conscious of the books that you bring into the classroom. Teachers need to choose books that explore differences, give voice to those who are traditionally silenced, explore social issues, and question dominant systems of meaning. This article was helpful for me to read because it gave me some good ideas on how to structure a read-aloud. It is definitely helpful to be prepared with a list of questions that you want to ask the students, but also to be flexible enough to change up the conversation if the students are going in a different direction. It is very important to understand that the students are the most important part of critical literacy and to choose books based on what is going on in your classroom as well as your classroom culture.

C.My practice has changed in a variety of ways since being introduced to critical literacy. I have brought in different books that I hadn’t read to my students before (Illustration 1), books that start discussions about a variety of topics. If I notice a topic that I would like to discuss in my classroom, I try to seek out books that relate to that issue. For example, I overheard many of my students discussing what girls and boys are “supposed” to do. I then brought in books that raised questions about gender norms and discussed these stories with my students (Illustration 2). Another part of my practice that has changed is my questioning strategies. When we read a book, I don’t just ask surface level questions; I ask questions that make students reflect and think about what is going on in the book.

Teachers who use critical literacy can be divided into three categories, newcomer, novice, and expert (Lewison, Flint & Van Sluys 2002). I consider myself to be a novice of critical literacy, having been exploring it for the past two years in both my classroom and in my studies. I still feel that even though I consider myself a novice and have been able to incorporate critical literacy into my classroom, I still see a lot of room for growth to become an expert. Critical literacy can also be looked at through four dimensions which include: 1) disrupting the commonplace; 2) interrogating multiple viewpoints; 3) focusing on sociopolitical issues; and 4) taking action and promoting social justice (Lewison, Flint & Van Sluys 2002). The fourth dimension of critical literacy is one component of critical literacy that I feel I still need to better understand and implement better in my classroom. It is something that I am trying to make sure that I incorporate into my use of critical literacy, but as of right now I haven't figured out a way to negotiate my students and me through this dimension. I plan to continue looking at a variety of ways other teachers address social justice in their classrooms, as well as diving into it myself, based on the issues that come up in the years to come.

D. Illustrations of Change

Illustration 1: Examples of books that I have brought into my classroom.

Illustration 2: Example of field notes taken during critical literacy discussion

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

William’s Doll by Charlotte Zolotow

The book, William’s Doll, is about a boy who wants a doll as a toy despite the disapproval of his father. I first hold up the front cover and then ask the kids what they think he is doing. Playing basketball and jumping is what most respond. I then read the title and ask if the picture and title match. Comments made (B-boy, G-girl):

“He’s got a doll on the back cover.” -B

“Maybe the boy is a doll.” -G

“He’s doing a boy thing, but he really doesn’t want that, he wants to be like are girl.” -B

I start to read the story and it gets to a part where his friends are coming over and I ask if they saw him playing with a doll what would they think. Comments made:

“They might think he’s weird.” -B

“They would probably laugh.” -B

“They don’t want to see him doing it, they wouldn’t believe their eyes.” -B

“They would think he’s like girl or something, they wouldn’t know what to think.” -B

We read on to the part where the dad does not want to get William a doll as a present. I the kids why they think the dad doesn’t want to buy him a doll. Comments made:

“The dad doesn’t want to get him a doll.” -B

“Maybe the dad thinks that dolls are only for girls.” -G

At the end of the story William’s grandmother gets him a doll and I ask the students what they think about it. Comments made:

“You don’t have to be a girl to have a doll.” -B

“Maybe she gave it to him because she’s a girl and its okay for her to give it to him.” -G

“There’s boys dolls too.” -B

After the last comment I ask what kind of boys dolls there are. The boys started naming them out loud: Woody doll, Buzz doll, Spider Man, Batman, Iron Man, Hulk doll, legos. After they say these dolls a girl responds, “Hey, you guys have a lot more dolls than we have. That’s not fair!” I ask if girls could play with those dolls too. The class all agreed that they could. It is time for the students to go to their pull-out for the day so the conversation comes to an end.

Illustration 3: Example of critical literacy questions that I use to help me guide discussions

E. Resources

Coffey, H. (2013). Critical Literacy. K-12 Teach and Learning from the UNC School Of

Education. Retrieved from:

Lewison, M., Flint, A. S., & Van, S. K. (May 01, 2002). Taking on Critical Literacy: The Journey of Newcomers and Novices. Language Arts, 79, 5, 382-92.

Meller, W. B., Richardson, D., & Hatch, J. A. (November 01, 2009). Using Read-Alouds with

Critical Literacy. Literature in K-3 Classrooms. Young Children, 64, 6, 76-78.

Patel, S. L., & Bean, T. W. (2007). Chapter 2: Why we need critical literacy. Critical literacy: Context, research, and practice in the K-12 classroom. Thousand Oaks: Sage

Strand C: Professional Learning

II. Collaboration

A. There are a variety of ways that I incorporate collaboration into my daily routine. I collaborate with colleagues at different grade levels and at other schools. In the past year I have served as a mentor to a first year teacher. I was able to help her with anything she needed during her first year of teaching. I have also helped out a veteran teacher who had been moved down to kindergarten, a grade she has not taught before. I took the initiative to assist her with any questions that she might have concerning the kindergarten curriculum. There are other types of collaboration that include collaboration with students and parents, but for the focus of this dossier I will explain more about how I have collaborated with other colleagues.

One way in which collaboration among teachers occurs is through the use of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). PLCs are used to accomplish a variety of goals such as ways to help student growth, opportunities for professional development, and in most recent years, how to use the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Grade level PLCs meet on a weekly basis to discuss these types of issues and any other issues that may come up.

In the previous school year, we had a specific goal that we wanted to achieve in the second half of the school year. It concerned a district wide initiative of looking at the CCSS and coming up with 15-20 Essential Standards for both English Language Arts (ELA) and Math. The idea of the essential standards is not to exclude the other standards, but to make sure that there are a set of standards that need to be addressed with fidelity so that students go to the next grade level with a good base of skills. It was the district's intent that we had an idea of what standards we wanted to be included as essential when we met district wide with teachers from our same grade levels. Though this was the district's goal by the end of the year, our kindergarten team felt is necessary to come up with the essential standards before the end of the year and before the meeting, that way we could discuss them with the first grade teachers to see if they agreed that these were skills the students needed to be successful in first grade. We also wanted to make sure that we had Common Formative Assessments (CFAs) made so that we would be ready to use them for the following school year.

Throughout the second half of the school year we met each week to discuss with each other the standards we felt the students needed to master before going on to first grade. We excluded any of the standards that contained the phrase “with prompting and support,” because first grade had the same standard just without the phrase. After sorting through the standards with the members of the kindergarten team as well as our school’s academic coach, we were able to agree upon 17 standards for ELA and 14 standards for Math (Illustration 1). After agreeing upon the standards when then met with the first grade team members to see how they felt about the standards that we deemed essential.

After conferring with the first grade team they felt that the essential standards that we agreed upon were needed to have a good base for going from kindergarten to first grade. The next step was then to create CFAs for each essential standard with would be assessed three times throughout the year (Illustration 2). We wanted to make sure that these CFAs would give us enough information about our students so that we could use the data to drive our instruction as well as create intervention groups. We created the CFAs as a group and then I created electronic copies for the whole group (Illustration 3).

Now that we had that we had developed CFAs for all of the essential standards we were ready to meet with other district kindergarten teachers to discuss why we had chose those to be essential standards (Illustration 4). We were able to have good dialogue with the other kindergarten teachers and most of the standards that we deemed essential were used to help create the district essential standards. Even though there were some different standards added to the district’s list, we were told that each site also had the

The goal of this collaboration was to come up with essential standards and to create CFAs that relate to each standard. Our kindergarten team was able to do that and now at the beginning of this year we have been able to start collecting data from the CFAs that we created last year.

B. Illustrations of Collaboration

Illustration 1- Essential Standards chosen for ELA and Math

Bosque Farms Elementary

Essential Common Core Standards

Kindergarten

ELA

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.K.10
Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose and understanding.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.K.10
Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose and understanding.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.1.d
Recognize and name all upper- and lowercase letters of the alphabet.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.2.a
Recognize and produce rhyming words.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.2.b
Count, pronounce, blend, and segment syllables in spoken words.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.2.d
Isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds (phonemes) in three-phoneme (consonant-vowel-consonant, or CVC) words.1 (This does not include CVCs ending with /l/, /r/, or /x/.)

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.3.a
Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary sound or many of the most frequent sounds for each consonant.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.3.b
Associate the long and short sounds with the common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.3.c
Read common high-frequency words by sight (e.g., the, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do, does).

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.K.1
Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose opinion pieces in which they tell a reader the topic or the name of the book they are writing about and state an opinion or preference about the topic or book (e.g., My favorite book is...).

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.K.2
Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose informative/explanatory texts in which they name what they are writing about and supply some information about the topic.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.K.3
Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to narrate a single event or several loosely linked events, tell about the events in the order in which they occurred, and provide a reaction to what happened.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.1.a
Print many upper- and lowercase letters.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.2.a
Capitalize the first word in a sentence and the pronoun I

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.2.b
Recognize and name end punctuation.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.2.c
Write a letter or letters for most consonant and short-vowel sounds (phonemes).

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.2.d
Spell simple words phonetically, drawing on knowledge of sound-letter relationships.

Math

CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.A.1
Count to 100 by ones and by tens.

CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.A.2
Count forward beginning from a given number within the known sequence (instead of having to begin at 1).

CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.A.3
Write numbers from 0 to 20. Represent a number of objects with a written numeral 0-20 (with 0 representing a count of no objects).

CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.B.4.a
When counting objects, say the number names in the standard order, pairing each object with one and only one number name and each number name with one and only one object.

CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.B.4.b
Understand that the last number name said tells the number of objects counted. The number of objects is the same regardless of their arrangement or the order in which they were counted.

CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.B.4.c
Understand that each successive number name refers to a quantity that is one larger.

CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.B.5
Count to answer "how many?" questions about as many as 20 things arranged in a line, a rectangular array, or a circle, or as many as 10 things in a scattered configuration; given a number from 1-20, count out that many objects.

CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.C.6
Identify whether the number of objects in one group is greater than, less than, or equal to the number of objects in another group, e.g., by using matching and counting strategies.

CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.C.7
Compare two numbers between 1 and 10 presented as written numerals.

CCSS.Math.Content.K.OA.A.5
Fluently add and subtract within 5.

CCSS.Math.Content.K.NBT.A.1
Compose and decompose numbers from 11 to 19 into ten ones and some further ones, e.g., by using objects or drawings, and record each composition or decomposition by a drawing or equation (such as 18 = 10 + 8); understand that these numbers are composed of ten ones and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine ones.

CCSS.Math.Content.K.MD.A.2
Directly compare two objects with a measurable attribute in common, to see which object has "more of"/"less of" the attribute, and describe the difference. For example, directly compare the heights of two children and describe one child as taller/shorter.