Teacher Work Sample Unit: Short vowel /e/ sound

1. Teacher Work Sample
University of Puerto Rico
At Humacao
English Department
Dalymirka González Rubert
EDPE 4018
Dr. Aníbal Muñoz Claudio
April 30, 2012

2. Teacher Work Sample
Contextual Factors
The Elementary School Nueva Urbana is located in the town of Ceiba, P.R.
The school has over 500 hundred students enrolled in the respective sixth grades.
The enrollment of the students varies from all kinds of social economic
backgrounds. Moreover, the majority of the students come from government
controlled apartments. This fact clarifies that most of the students’ family have
low class income. The school offers a variety of orientations that aim to extend
knowledge to the parent
The classroom where I would be teaching it has a very comfortable size.
The area is pretty spacious and it has air conditioning facilities. Also this
classroom has a television set and radio for the benefits of integrating technology
in my lessons. This classroom is the homeroom of the first grade teacher Mrs.
Cruz. My cooperating teacher Mr. Rivera also has an English laboratory classroom.
This laboratory is mainly use when the students are developing a task by working in
groups. Although most of my activities involve cooperative learning, I will be mainly
using Mrs. Cruz classroom.
In my first grade group there are 8 girls and 13 boys. In this group there
are also a few students who are classify under special needs. Also there are a 25%

3. Teacher Work Sample
of the students who are above the grade level expectations in English. On the
other hand there are a 75% of the students who are below the grade level
expectations. Taking this into consideration I develop a unit that can be beneficial
for all of the students.
Learning Goals
The goals for this unit are based on the Content and Standards and grade
level expectations of the English curriculum for first grade students. The
majority of my students have not performed satisfactory in the English Class. I
have to develop objectives and goals were my students meet the grade level
expectations. I will be incorporating exercises that are similar to the “Pruebas
Puertorriqueñas”, in order for my students to start acknowledging the different
types of exercises. I will also have to include lots of visuals in order to reach my
special need students. I would also have to include lots of repetition drills to
support the students with language difficulties.
These are my learning goals for the phoneme unit:
1. The students will be able to develop and demonstrate phonemic awareness in
order to identify short vowel sounds. (L/s 1.2)
2. The students will develop auditory discrimination to identify distinctive short
vowel sounds. (L/S 1.2)

4. Teacher Work Sample
3. The students will identify short vowel sounds in other to decode words and
phrases fluently. (R.1.1)
4. . Uses phonemic awareness strategies to manipulate short vowel sounds and
form new monosyllabic words. (R.1.2)
Assessment Plan
For this unit I will use different worksheets that aim to identify the short
vowel e sound. For short vowel e sound the post test and pretest are different. I
will be treating the short vowel e sound in monosyllable words as well as an
integration of the short vowel e sound using a literature context. Also short vowel
sound e will be assessing in terms of identification of similar phonograms.
Day Activity Goals
Day 1 Short vowel e sound 1, 2,
introduction /pretest
Day 2 Short vowel e sound in 1,2,3
literature context
Day 3 Short vowel e sound in 1,2
phonograms.
Day 4 Short vowel e sound 1,2, 4
building sentences
Day 5 Short vowel e sound post- 1,2,3,4
test

5. Teacher Work Sample
Design for Instruction
The pretest showed me that my students know how to identify the short
vowel e sound but they do not have enough background knowledge to make
monosyllable words with short vowel e. When I produce the sounds of the words
they were able to identify if the words contain the short vowel but when they had
to make the sounds by themselves it became challenging for the majority of the
students. This is the mayor reason why I incorporated literature reading in the
unit. I had the students read aloud the short story Get the Tent which
emphasizes in reproducing the short vowel e sound. While the students were
engaged in the reading activity they were able to identify the words with this
particular sound as they read collectively and individually. I also decided to include
phonograms because while working with this skill the students a different overview
of the sound. I consider that since during a phonogram lesson the aim is to
recognize the words that rhyme they will be unconsciously reviewing the short
vowel /e/ sound. The same ideas goes along with sentence building, this technique
is develop using short vowel /e/ sound words but with a focus on sentence building.
Basically all of the activities revolve around the sound aimed for development from
an abstract form. The student will be engage in different activities where they

6. Teacher Work Sample
can review the sound in different types of context. I consider that this is
relatively important because it gives the students the opportunity to grasp and
differentiate the sound.
Detailed lesson:
Day Lesson
Day 1 Unit introduction, pretest, short vowel e
recognition.
Day 2 Identification and Recognition – a
reading activity in which the students
will identify the short vowel e sounds
presented in the short story.
Day 3 Phonograms Activity: Identifying
phonograms with short vowel e
sound.
Day 4 Sentence Building – The students will
create sentences using monosyllables of
short vowel e sound.
Day 5: Unit posttest

7. Teacher Work Sample
Instructional Decision Making
The first time I had to adjust my instructional plan was during the pretest.
The activities that I gave the students as an introduction of the vowel sound were
effective. The problem started when I gave the students the pretest assessment.
I had included only pictures of words with the short vowel but these pictures were
not identified. For a 25% of the student this was not an issue. On the other the
75% of the students had an inconvenience of recognizing short vowel sound in a
simple listening activity. For the majority of the students it becomes easier if
they can relate picture and text. Due to this fact I had to change my whole
assessment plan because I used pictures instead of text for the handouts and
posttest. I had also had to identify the pictures from the phonograms lesson with
the corresponding text. Basically I had to align all of the handouts to picture text
in order to make them more user friendly for the students. Since my aim was for
the students to achieve auditory discrimination for the post test was based on
auditory discrimination.

8. Teacher Work Sample
Analysis of Student Learning
The pretest and posttest results definitely proved that the students were
engaged in a positive learning environment. The majority of the students increased
their scores as a result in posttest. Although this was a short it is clear on the
graphs that the unit was effective. Moreover this results show that the
decisions made for the instructions were effective and that my students were able
to complete different task following the grade level expectations.
At the beginning when the student took the pretest, the majority of the
results were in a rank of a failing average. These results showed that the students
were not meeting the grade level expectations. The phonemes are a skill that is
examined in the “Pruebas Puertorriqueñas” and our students need to be ready to
accomplish good results in this standardized test. After analyzing the students’
performance I understand that the results in the pretest where poor because the
pictures in the exercise where lacking of identification. Taking this into
consideration I made several instructional decisions that will benefit the students.
After making the changes the results demonstrate that the whole class
achievement rose from a poor level to a satisfactory level of achievement. In the
next table we can acknowledge the difference in the results of the pretest and

9. Teacher Work Sample
posttest. I consider that my students had the space to grow and raised their level
of knowledge among phonemes. I that learning happens when teachers can develop
many strategies and techniques to engage the students in a positive learning
environment.
Table #1:
Pretest
10%
Advanced
14%
Proficient
76% Satisfactor
Table 1: Represents the results of the
performance of the students in the pretest. A 76% of the students obtained non
acceptable results in the pretest.
Table # 2:
Potest
Advanced
19%
5% 38%
Proficient
14%
Satisfactory
24%
Table 2: Represents the results of the
performance of the students during the posttest. The majority of the students
obtained above satisfactory levels on the posttest.

10. Teacher Work Sample
Evaluation and Reflection
I consider that this unit was a complete success. I believe that is important
that my students learned the short vowel sounds because this will enable them to
understand long vowel sounds in second grade. I considered that it is relatively
important that students identify and recognize distinctive sounds in order to be
able to read. With this unit I have learned that it is extremely important for first
graders to be able to relate text and picture. In many auditory discrimination
exercises having a text to relate makes it easier for the students to develop the
given task. Although I knew that it was easier for the students to recognize the
short vowel sound by incorporating a written text, I decided to assess auditory
discrimination for the first part of the posttest. I believed that if the students
were able to recognize the sound with or without text, then my unit will be a
success. To my surprised my students proved me that they can both recognize the
sound by completing auditory only or written exercises. I have a group were the
25% of the students have excellent linguistic skills but the other 75% of the
students rank below the grade level expectations. I used simple but meaningful
lessons in order to reach all of my student’s needs. I wanted my students to
differentiate the sounds, and I was able to meet my objectives. Since this unit

11. Teacher Work Sample
was a success I will definitely develop similar units for the rest of the short vowel
sounds.