RICA - Reading Instruction Competence Assessment

Why?

I think it's because the state wants to know if an aspiring teacher knows how to teach reading. Reading is a skill, in contrast with listening and speaking, it's not organic to learn it, as a contrast to crawling, standing up, and walking. Yet eventually most people learn how to read and write. Reading has to be taught explicitly as well as implicitly and the methods vary by culture and age level of the students.

The RICA is nothing like CBEST (California Basic Educational Skills Test) or CSET (California Subject Examinations for Teachers), because it doesn't ask questions that would yield definite, hard-fact answers. For example, You know that there is a specific and definite answer to the question, "What do you call a note whose length is typically equal to four beats?", the answer is a whole note. Now a RICA question could be something like this: A boy is reading at a second grade level. What do you do if you are his fifth grade teacher? That is of course on top of my head and not a RICA question but you can imagine that there are several ways to answer this and there might be times when all of the four possible answers, when properly implemented, might help a student reach the desired reading level.

What would be helpful is to think about what kind of answers are expected. One's answers should be conservative and balanced. You, as the aspiring teacher, are expected to know that reading instruction depends on both the teacher and the student. Like, you give 50 percent and the kid gives his half. You already know how to give your half, the trick is to persuade the students to put effort in learning to read. There may be times when you feel strongly about a certain way of teaching, but please reserve it for when you get your own classroom and a set of borrowed children ;-)

The RICA tests in five domains:

1.      Assessment

2.      Phonemic Awareness

3.      Fluency

4.      Vocabulary

5.      Comprehension

These five domains are what you would need to focus on. I suggest you forget the whole thing about the content areas, because they are under these domains anyway and on the test results these are what they focus on.

IF- Then

Remember that the format of the questions is always If-Then. IF the child is like this, THEN I will do this. In this review session I will go by domains starting with Domain 2, Phonemic Awareness. I will try to discuss the activities that promote each domain. The format will be as follows:

·         Definition of Domain focus

·         Tasks

·         Assessment

·         Instruction

o   Teach Explicitly

o   Teach Implicitly

·         Notes

 

Please comment and let me know what you think of this type of review. I would really like to know if this is helpful or not.

Lizzie McGuire

 

Lizzie: Ronnie broke up with me.

Gordo: He's a loser.

Lizzie: No Gordo, I'm the loser. Okay? He likes another girl. She's probably prettier than me and she's probably smarter than me and she's probably a lot more fun than I am.

Gordo: No, she's not.

Lizzie: How do you know?

Gordo: Because there's nobody prettier than you, or more fun to be with.

Lizzie: You forgot smarter.

Gordo: Yeah, well, I was including myself in that one.

Lizzie: You're such a good friend, Gordo. 

Jellyfish

LOVE. LONGING. MAGIC

Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen’s 2007 entry to the Cannes Film festival proved to be worthy of its Camera D’ Or. In fact, I think it should have won an Oscar too. I am not kidding. I so love this film that I entreat everyone who can read subtitles or at least speak Hebrew to watch this film, especially if you are a Filipino.
We first see the newly single Batya in an akward goodbye scene with her ex-boyfriend. She looked sad but she wasn’t crying and she didn’t ask him to stay. In this film the stories of three women intersect at a Tel Aviv Wedding. Batya worked as a waitress; Joy, a Filipina a caregiver for an elderly woman; and the bride who sprained her ankle, ruining her dream honeymoon.
The actress who played Batya hardly spoke but her eyes and movements say it all. I am thankful that the role of Joy was given to a relatively . Keren the bride is the character I liked least because she seemed so demanding and spoiled by her dotting husband.
I was intrigued at first as to why they would include a story about a Filipino OCW in their film. I transcribed an interview of Shira Geffen and Etgar Keret which surprised me and made me admire them even more:

“Because of the harsh political reality in Israel, most of the social issues have been forgotten. Both in the representation in art but also in everyday life, and there is something about the Filipino people that in a sense they are almost invisible. You see many of them walking down streets taking care of the elderly but basically when people go in the street, they look through them; they do not exist. Shira was fascinated with the story because there was something ironic with the fact that the Filipinos leave their children behind to come and take care of some elderly person instead of their children. So it’s like a circle; you neglect your own child so you can take care of somebody else’s parent because his child doesn’t want to take care of him. And because she experience such a relationship between her grandmother and a Filipino woman took care of her became good friends with her and also changed the grandmother’s attitude to life it was very natural for Shira to chose this story and I felt was an important story to tell.” (Etgar Keret)

Oh and the kid, of course! Batya found a child by the beach wearing a lifesaver around her waist. I thought it was amusing, seeing that the kid had red hair and doesn't speak, maybe she is Irish and doesn't understand Hebrew, funny how the other people didn't ask her in English. Lost in translation once again. On another hand, I may just be generalizing and that is not good either. The kid seem to be a guide for Batya, and led her to Malka who somehow helped her get in touch with her childhood memories.

One criticsm though: I just thought it was impractical of Joy to bring the giant ship back home to the Philippines as a carry on luggage, but that's just me.

Obviously I really love this film and I give it a grade of 93. See the trailer below.

Lesson Plan: Math- Multiplication

Enduring understanding:
Students will learn that two factors will always yield the same product even when they are in different order.
Content Standards that are the target of Student Learning
(List the complete text of the relevant parts of each standard)
2.2 Solve Problems involving simple number patterns.
3.1 Use repeated addition, arrays and counting by multiples to do multiplication.

English Language development (ELD) standards (if applicable)
Make oneself understood when speaking by using consistent Standard English grammatical forms and sounds.
Learning Objectives (both content and language)
By the end of this lesson students will be able to identify that the products are the same even when the factors are written in a different order.
Formal and Informal Assessments:

Students will be called to recall their prior knowledge on repeated addition and multiplication.

Instructional Strategies and learning tasks to support Student learning (what you and the students will be doing)

Phase I: Structured Practice.
I will state the California Content Standards we will be reaching today.

We will work on the problem of the day. Before we start, there will be pair names from now on. The taller person will be red and the other one yellow. Our pair names are red and yellow.

Write the Problem of the Day in the board:

314 – 79 = ; 139 + 478 = ; 410 - 386


Work on these problems by yourselves. (10 minutes)
(Rationale of the Problem of the Day: The students learned about subtracting and adding three-digit numbers. I want my students to always line up the numbers when adding and subtracting three-digit numbers because I believe this skill will help them when they multiply and divide bigger numbers.)

Phase II: Guided practice:

You have learned how to build and use arrays to write multiplication sentences. Today we will explore how to write multiplication sentences with the same numbers but in different order.

We will be using counters.

Yellow, make sure your counters are showing the yellow side.

Red, make sure your counters are showing the red side.

We learned about making arrays. Arrays have equal rows. Can someone show me the row in this array? (Show the fish array)
When we do our activity, remember
______ x _____ = ____
Rows #/row product

Yellow, make an array that shows 3 x 2
Red help yellow count all the counters.
How many do you have? Write it on the handout
Red, make an array that shows 2 x3
Yellow help red count all the counters.
How many do you have? Are they the same? Write it on the handout.

Lets try another one:
Yellow: 3x 4
Red: 4x 3

What did you notice? Talk to your partners. Yellow tell first. If you have the same idea, Red should say “I agree with you”.



Phase III: Independent Practice:

The students will answer the exercises on p.536 - 538. Students need to work with partners.

Assessment:

I will know that they have learned when I see that they are writing the products correctly and they are not confused about changing the order.

Rubric

3 – The student is able to understand that in multiplication, the order of the factors are irrelevant and correctly answer most of the questions in the handouts.
2 – The student is able to see the pattern yet some answers were not correct.
1 - The student did not see the pattern and did not attempt the exercises.

Question of the day

Would he love the city as much if you weren't part of it?

- The Capybara

I can't seem to make you mine - Clientele

I’ve been listening to this song “I can’t seem to make you mine” by Clientile, and at first I was swooning because it was on the OST of The Lake House (one of my favorite movies of all time!). The melody made me think of autumn or spring nights when it rains at night. How comforting it is when I’m at home, freshly showered and sipping on a cup of tea, or coffee. Reminds of the 70s too, not that I lived in that decade (born in the 80's baby!).I searched it on youtube to see if I can get a version with the lyrics, and this is just one of those songs that made me go, huh? There is a strong hint of surrealism in the figurative language used here. All that just to say "I can't seem to make you mine".

Absence

I have scarcely left you
When you go in me, crystalline,
Or trembling,
Or uneasy, wounded by me
Or overwhelmed with love, as
when your eyes
Close upon the gift of life
That without cease I give you.

My love,
We have found each other
Thirsty and we have
Drunk up all the water and the
Blood,
We found each other
Hungry
And we bit each other
As fire bites,
Leaving wounds in us.

But wait for me,
Keep for me your sweetness.
I will give you too
A rose.

Pablo Neruda

...

“ The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country. “ – Abraham Lincoln, December 1862

A song of Despair

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the dwarves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.

You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.

Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!

I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.

Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.

Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

How terrible and brief my desire was to you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.

Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.

Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.

And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.

This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!

Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!

From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.

You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.

Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands.

Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.

It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!

-PABLO NERUDA