Step 3

-To what extent were you were expected to follow a scripted curriculum, or add your own ideas to a curriculum that already exists, or create a unit that is entirely new?

During my Guided Lead Teaching, I had a lot of flexibility with my planning. I was not expected to follow a scripted curriculum and in fact, everything my mentor teacher and I do is created on our own for the most part. Weekly, my MT and I plan by using the literacy objectives given in our basal. We tend to come up with our own ways of teaching the material, but we use the book as an outline of what we should be covering in our second grade curriculum. Creating an entirely new unit was fun because I was able to do whatever I wanted. My most important resource was my MT and she helped me create and change lessons throughout my GLT.

-What was unproblematic and/or challenging about planning a unit in this context?

The most challenging part about planning unit was finding and creating meaningful lessons that focused on making connections. There is only so much you can do. I found it unproblematic to plan each lesson because I did not have to fit in scripts or plan around a literacy curriculum like many interns did with Reading Street. Having the flexibility to create your own lessons is fun and engaging. I learned so much about myself as a teacher because I had to create each lesson and make changes when things did not go perfectly as planned. I was able to find some fun activities to guide my students through the process of successfully making a connection to a text. It was challenging to make lessons so that they were consistent and gave students a similar message every time I would teach.

-What obstacles did you face? How did you overcome them?

The biggest obstacle I faced was grabbing connections from my students. Many of them would not make a connection until I shared my connection about a story. Hands would go flying up. However, students often retold what they heard in the story, and said that the same exact thing happened to them. I know this was not true. I began to take the time and chat with students during their center work to help guide their thinking. I modeled and expressed that I needed more details. We discussed that maybe a story makes you think about losing a tooth, but the way you lost your tooth could have been totally different, and that still makes a connection. Students were expected to have at least two “w-words” (who, what, where, why, when, how) included to describe their own connection to the stories they read or were stories I read to them. This seemed to work and gave students a guideline for making a connection. I saw a huge difference in their connection descriptions after implementing this.

-How did working on developing your ‘core practice’ influence the types of learning opportunities you were able to offer your students?

Working on discussing and sharing my own ideas supported students to share their own ideas. Working on speaking skills and listening skills was offered to my students. Since my GLT, my students have been more talkative and willing to share. I would still like to work on finding ways to have students more engaged in discussing their ideas, but my students have a hard time using each other as resources or seeing the benefits of sharing and listening to ideas.

-What dilemmas (if any) did you face and how did you manage them? Consider issues that may relate to developing your professional identity, developing strong teacher- student relationships, constructing relevant curriculum, or assessing students in meaningful and productive ways.

Off the top of my head, I cannot think of any dilemmas I faced with my students. As I have mentioned before, I only have 14 students. With that being said, I am able to manage the class successfully. I have created relationships with my students in different ways and I feel respected by each student in my class. I was able to assess my students by working with them during centers and reviewing their worksheets. This was extremely productive because I was able to hear students think aloud and hear their thought process of relating a part in a story to their lives. Some students have trouble writing things down. I found that working with them and pushing them include details in their descriptions was helpful. Students seemed to enjoy the support I gave them and it got them excited about making connections. They now love telling me stories relating to topics and books we discuss and read in class. Having a small class size has made the managing process extremely easy and has allowed me to gain confidence in my teaching.

-What enabled you to be successful?

I was successful in my planning and teaching for two reasons. First off, my communication with my mentor teacher is awesome. We would discuss everyday what we observed our students doing and thinking pertaining to making connections. We would discuss and make changes as needed for the next day. This supported a well-designed unit and smooth lesson transitions from day to day. Secondly, I took the time to work with students each day. Like I said, during centers I would talk with students and help guide them through making connections to different parts of a story. They enjoyed telling me stories about their lives and it was fun for them. I also felt I did a great job of making changes to lessons. Some things were just not working, and I cut them out and came up with new ideas. Teaching involves problem solving and I found that to be successful, you have to be willing to make changes.

-Did the unit proceed as you expected? Why or why not?

Before I taught my unit, I anticipated that making connections would be a pretty easy strategy for my students to pick up on. However, it was not as easy as I thought. Students understood the basic idea of making a connection after my first interactive read aloud. They struggled to give details supporting their connections. I found that students also had trouble understanding that, to make a connection does not mean that the same exact thing or situation happened to you. It was hard for students to see that you can make a connection by just reading a story and having it remind you of something else. Maybe the story involves playing basketball and a team wins a game. This may make students think about how they played soccer. Sometimes they would make a false connection because they did not realize that making a connection does not have to be exactly the same. It reminds you of something.

-What surprises or “aha moments” did you experience?

I was surprised that students struggled to fill out my graphic organizer in their centers. The worksheet included boxes to organize parts of a story. Then a box was connected to that box for them to make a connection to that part of the story. They were asked to use words like, “this reminds me of” or “this makes me think about…”, to help them describe their connection. After the first week of struggling through this worksheet in their book box center and listening center, students understood what to do for the following week and made improvements in their recording. My “aha moments” have been when students randomly say, “this makes me think about..”, when we are doing a math lesson or something not directly related to literacy. I love hearing these ideas because I can tell they have picked up on what it means to make a connection and are using the strategy to better understand what is being taught, even if it is in a different subject.

-What do you still need to learn about teaching in this target area, about your developing your ‘core practice’ and about teaching literacy in general?

I need to learn how to create purposeful discussions. It is so hard to get my students to talk and share ideas related to our literacy objectives. I need to learn proactive ways to keep all students involved and get them excited about sharing ideas.

Cross Inquiry 3 Part A Step 3

I answered my questions in a more free flowing format, but I think it is all there. If there is any confusion please let me know.

The curriculum was the entire challenge for me in this unit. It is also one of the reasons I tackled this task. There is no written curriculum in writing that I have to follow for ELPS. I do have to cover the topic areas that the teachers have agreed to. These include all of the CCSS units. I also have to grade my students’ progress based on a six trait writing rubric. In the past they have used the Lucy Calkins curriculum, but this isn’t mandatory. This gave me great freedom in planning my unit, but in the end may have been the lack of support that made me feel like the unit was a failure. Some of the things I had to consider for my writing unit then came from the core practice I wanted to practice, the schema I had from watching my MT teach his writing unit and what I have seen in MSU classes, and finally what I wanted my students to be able to accomplish based on the ELPS rubric and CCSS’s.

                I knew that I wanted my students to feel like this was an authentic writing task. That was the first step in designing my unit. I also knew that I had to have the students write an informational or all about piece. This led to the insight that maybe I should take the how to unit from the back of Routman’s book and adapt it to something a new student might like to know about our school or East Lansing. I also had a framework from the text that I could follow for my unit.

                I also knew from watching my mentor teacher that I should break the unit up into small parts. We should work on hooks one day, brainstorming info on another, conclusions, etc. I also knew from MSU classes that I should give my students lots of support by modeling for them what was expected, letting them practice and get feedback from peers, and conferencing with them to make sure that they were able to use these pieces in their final piece. This gave me a framework for what lessons I should teach and what the lesson should look like.

                The final bit of information I used came from the rubric and CCSS’s. I knew that there were certain things that I would have to look for in my students’ pieces. This meant that in my lessons I had to make sure I taught them those things. The problem was that there were 22 things on the rubric and only 10 days to teach. I would have to combine and assume that my students knew how to do some of these things already. These included things like proper use of grammar and spelling.

                I think I ran into several challenges and aha moments during the unit. The first was that writing time always seemed too short to be able to allow me to have the students listen to my lesson, practice it with a partner, and then write on their own draft. I needed a way to combine things and it took me a while to realize that they could do the last two steps by working collaboratively on their pieces. This did lead to another aha moment. I also realized that the students didn’t have a framework for how to work together. This is a long process that I knew I wouldn’t be able to accomplish at this time so I didn’t even tackle it.

                I think I still need to learn how to get students more invested in the topic they are writing about. As great as I thought this idea was at the time, going through the unit with the students still made it feel contrived and weak. The students need to want to know about something and get so excited that they have to tell someone else about it. This might take the form of having them write smaller and more frequently. I also want to work on the step above. How do I get students to work collaboratively and productively? There is a very surface level attempt to help their classmates. Usually it was listening and then not giving any real feedback or asking any real questions. When questions were asked they were superficial and often angered the writer. I need to learn how to scaffold this situation so the students can benefit from it.

Inquiry 3 Part A Step 3

To what extent were you were expected to follow a scripted curriculum, or add your own

ideas to a curriculum that already exists, or create a unit that is entirely new?

My unit fits in with the writing workshop curriculum for second grade. However, my core practice allowed me quite a bit of freedom when it came to creating what I was going to have the students do and how. For instance, my literacy unit revolved around writing through a meaningful task. I got to create and design this meaningful task (write a friendly letter to a book author) and decide what each lesson should include in order to adequately achieve success with the meaningful task. Therefore, there was no scripted curriculum to follow; everything was my own creation. However, because of the nature of my meaningful task, I had to make sure I incorporated a few elements from the curriculum revolving around the actual writing process, including lessons on punctuation and grammar (although I was able to teach them in a manner of my own choosing).

What was unproblematic and/or challenging about planning a unit in this context?

This free-format was unproblematic in the initial general planning of the unit, but proved to be challenging later on, during the teaching overview, when I had to decide what I spend each day doing. For instance, I was unsure of the progression of the order of the events with which I should teach my unit in order to reach my end goal. I had to decide on my own what topics should precede others in order for my students to not only grasp the concepts, but to get the most clear, and meaningful interpretation of the tasks that were working toward the overarching unit goals. Therefore, without a structure to fall back on, the planning of the unit in relation to sequence of events was challenging. I sought advice from my Mentor Teacher about the appropriate sequencing and also looking at the progression of writing lessons from the Reading Street curriculum.

What obstacles did you face? How did you overcome them?

I faced the obstacle of getting all of my students on the same page at the same time. I did not anticipate that this would be as big of an issue as it turned out to be. I had students who were understanding the main themes of the lessons, and others who were not. This was specific to my editing and revising lessons. Some students understood these lessons very well and were able to transfer it to their own practice, while a large number continued to show a disregard for it. This forced some changes in my previously planned unit and I had to move some lessons back in order to incorporate others that would target this issue. Also, some students were getting pulled for special intervention during many of my lessons and so it was hard to get them on the same level with the other students once they came back in the classroom. I addressed this last obstacle by moving the times I taught my lessons around to times when students weren’t being pulled from class.

 

How did working on developing your ‘core practice’ influence the types of learning

opportunities you were able to offer your students?

Developing my core practice influenced the types of learning opportunities I was able to offer my students by allowing me to a format through which students could use writing as a way to voice their knowledge, opinions, feelings, and thoughts about various subjects. By creating and designing my authentic meaningful task of having students write to a book author, students saw that the importance of my target area of writing and were granted opportunities to voice their feelings and opinions about a book to a meaningful audience. This task used as my core practice allowed students the opportunity to see the relevance in writing to their own lives and granted them new outlets with which to express themselves. An authentic, meaningful task was therefore used to showcase my target area of writing and to afford students the experience of learning about the writing process through a number of fun, creative, relevant, and meaningful lessons.

What dilemmas (if any) did you face and how did you manage them?

 Dilemmas I faced revolved around getting students to care about editing and revising and to transfer their newly gained editing/revising skills to their own practice. I found that even after explicit instruction about editing and revising written work, students were still not relaying this knowledge and practicing it in their own writing. I targeted this by showing the importance of editing/revising through demonstrations requiring students to read and understand a poorly edited piece of written work. I also had to pull individual students for conferencing that were still showing no regard for editing/revising. Also, I had issues with some students grasping the skill/content and then others not and so I was kind of torn at times about moving on from that point. I found that I needed to revisit some key ideas more than once, which worked as a refresher for the students that mostly understood the concepts and helped clarify ideas for those who were struggling. I also had to try to incorporate a lot more individual conferencing.

 

What enabled you to be successful?

I was able to be successful in managing these dilemmas by seeking out advice from other sources. I used readings from Routman that helped me to remember that editing for grammar, punctuation, etc. is not the most important part of writing. Having students get their ideas out on paper and compose meaningful writing is the most important aspect I need to place an emphasis on. This helped me to recognize that I can do as much as I can with lessons on editing and revising and then I need to conference with explicit instruction and modeling for those students who are still struggling. I realized I needed to help these students to see the relevance in editing and revising and to give them the confidence that they can do so themselves in their own writing practices.

 

Did the unit proceed as you expected? Why or why not?

Some of the unit proceeded as expected, but most of it did not. Lessons changed based on what I thought students needed more practice with as we went along in the unit. Students struggled in areas that I did not anticipate and some aspects of the unit, such as the emailing portion at the end (where students send their letters to the author via email) turned out to not be feasible without many more lessons on typing and logging in an email address, so this portion was completely eliminated from my unit.

What surprises or “aha moments” did you experience?

An “aha moment” I had was when I became aware that I was wrongly thinking that some of the struggling students weren’t interested in the task or that they did not like writing. They simply need extra support and were feeling discouraged by their struggles. By having struggling students verbally express their ideas while I wrote them down, students were able to copy this writing and have correct spelling and wording, while still maintaining ownership over the ideas and creativity in it.

 

What do you still need to learn about teaching in this target area, about your developing

your ‘core practice’ and about teaching literacy in general?

 I would like to learn more about reaching all of my different literacy learners. I feel like I still need to learn about different ways to approach the teaching of writing in a realistic way that is not so rountine and structured by the process that writing usually takes, but is unconventional and more engaging for the students. I feel like my core practice of using an authentic, meaningful task was helpful to a great degree in making the writing process more engaging for my students, but we still had those days when it felt structured work. I would also like to learn how to get my students more interested in editing and revising since this is the area that seemed to be the most dull for them. I would like to use my students’ strengths in literacy to teach and would like to keep learning about ways to reach them through these strengths.

Niki Ward Part A Step 3

Step 3

To what extent were you were expected to follow a scripted curriculum, or add your own ideas to a curriculum that already exists, or create a unit that is entirely new?

            My unit was written by the writing coordinator for the district and is district-mandated. The curriculum is completely scripted, but does not have to be followed word for word. The district does want to make sure that all students are learning the same material, but it does not have to be uniform. I was able to use the lessons as a backbone to my own instruction and finesse my lessons to how I wanted to teach them. Many of my lessons incorporated my own activities in them.  I used the lessons written by the district as a starting point in my planning,

What was unproblematic and/or challenging about planning a unit in this context?

            I felt that this was a great way to plan my lessons, because it gave me a starting point with ideas on how to teach the lessons, but allowed me to use my own creativity to teach the material. The only challenge I was faced with was being restricted on the order I had to teach my students and how drawn out the lessons were. There were many lessons that I felt could have been combined, or improved. For instance, there was a whole lesson on using repetition in their story for emphasis. I felt that this was a very short lesson and could have been combined with one of the revision lessons where they were working on adding detail into their stories. It was a very small revision that I felt did not need a whole lesson for.

What obstacles did you face? How did you overcome them?

            One of my main obstacles I faced was that about half of my students participating in my lessons grasped the revision skill taught, but then did not apply that lesson to their own writing to improve their stories. I had to first identify why there was a disconnect for my students and why they were not able to see the relevance of the information taught in their own writing. I had to figure out what I was doing wrong as the teacher. I then realized that rather than using my conferencing for pointing out areas of improvement, I should use them to reteach the information taught in the mini-lessons in a different way one-on-one and help my students find the relevance of the information taught in their own stories.

            Another obstacle I was faced with was my own expectations of my students’ writing. In starting my unit I had general expectations for my students’ work. As I was assessing my students’ stories I quickly realized that having the same expectations for all of my students was not fair and would cause many of my students to be unfairly graded. I had to assess my students on an individual basis, where I assess their improvements from the pre-assessment to the post-assessments. This allowed me to truly assess my students individually giving them a fair chance at showing their own improvements.

How did working on developing your ‘core practice’ influence the types of learning

opportunities you were able to offer your students?

            In working on developing my core practice of conferencing with students regarding their writing I found many opportunities to improve my students’ learning in regards to their writing development. In discovering different facets to use conferencing for I found valuable ways to improve my students’ developments by reiterating for them what was already taught in the mini-lesson and helping my students see how to apply that knowledge to their own stories. I was able to provide both a surface lesson and a deep personal lesson to my students to strengthen their understanding. I also was able to differentiate based on need to improve their individual learning. Also working on my core practice I found different ways to teach my lessons through different activities that helped different types of learners. I was able to learn how to provide different avenues of learning as I did not have all of the same kind of learners in my classroom.

What dilemmas (if any) did you face and how did you manage them? Consider issues that may relate to developing your professional identity, developing strong teacher-student relationships, constructing relevant curriculum, or assessing students in meaningful and productive ways.

            In working on developing my core practice and planning my lessons I did not take into consideration that my students would not be able to apply the lesson to their own writing. This was because I really did not know my students as personally as what I had thought. I assumed that the lessons would be enough for all of my learners to be able to use in making improvements. I was extremely wrong and was faced with the dilemma of how to make the lessons relatable to those students who were not able to apply the lessons to their writing. I had to think about where the disconnect was for those students.         When I began reflecting on my lessons I realized that the issue wasn’t my students it was the way I was using my conferencing. Originally I was using my conferencing to point out areas for the students to work on (not always related to the lesson). I quickly found that this was problematic because my students were not even making changes to their stories to begin with. That’s when I realized that I should use my conferencing to reiterate, sometimes re-teach the lesson and help my students see how they can apply that information to their stories. In applying this lesson I was able to help my students make changes in their writing.

What enabled you to be successful?

            As I was trying to figure out what was going wrong with my lessons I began reflecting back to my math experiences I had in high school. I was able to understand the material taught but when it came to applying that in my own homework it was as if I was looking at a completely different set of problems. The solution for me was a tutor who could just reiterate what I learned in the lessons showing me how to apply it to other problems. It was just the one-on-one interaction that helped me. This made me realize that I need to approach my conferences the same way. I also used what I learned from my readings in Routman to help guide me to the solution and to make my teaching as successful as I could. There was reading in Routman’s book on the issue of students not automatically transferring data.

Did the unit proceed as you expected? Why or why not?

            My unit definitely did not proceed as what I had expected. My students did not catch on to the lessons like I thought they would and I had to put extra work into my unit to get them to make the connection between the information taught and their own pieces of writing. I also had thought that I would have a large gap between my students’ work. I thought that I would have several stories that received high scores and several stories that would receive low scores. This however was not the case as my way of assessing changed. Instead of assessing students with the same expectations I assessed my students’ progress individually. This changed my outcome greatly and I had most of my students successfully make changes in their writing.

What surprises or “aha moments” did you experience?

            One of the biggest “aha moments” I had during the lesson was my realization that I was using my conferencing all wrong. I realized I had to use my conferences to re-teach my lessons. Another surprise and “aha moment” was my students’ issues in using the lesson taught to their own writing. My “aha moment” with this was when I realized it wasn’t my students’ choice to not apply the lessons it was my students’ learning style and needs that was causing the issue. They don’t learn well with whole-group discussions, but do learn well in small group and one-on-one lessons.

What do you still need to learn about teaching in this target area, about your developing your ‘core practice’ and about teaching literacy in general?

            I still would like to learn about how to differentiate instruction for writing to reach all different kinds of learning styles. I also need to learn more about the most successful way to teaching writing whether it be through mini-lessons that teach isolated step-by-step skills or if there is a more successful way to teach different steps in writing.

Reflection 2

My second lesson seemed to go much better than my first thanks to the reflection I put into that lesson and the time I had to adjust. I had to skip the part I had planned for them to share their work from the previous session because that session went so long that we didn’t get to it. This did give me the time though to revisit the purpose of the draft and clarify the problems we had before. The main purpose of this lesson became to brainstorm ideas of things that might be appropriate for a new student to read about. I noticed that after I clarified the lesson the students mentioned fewer rules ideas that had to do with how we did something and they had more ideas about why we did things in the school or what the things in the classroom were. They also had some great ideas about places they could write about. The only confusion I noticed on the brainstorming part was that some students wanted to write about their favorite places to go. These included Tim Horton’s and McDonalds. I had to make a specific rule that their location be something you could only find in East Lansing. The problem was that for some of the students their entire schema was East Lansing. They didn’t realize there is a bigger world out there and you can go to Tim Horton’s and McDonalds in lots and lots of places. This was problematic in the brainstorming process for them and my mentor teacher and I actually had to sit and conference with those few students to help them come up with appropriate ideas.

I think there is another possibility that the product we brainstormed as a class tripped some students up. There is the possibility that those students had the schema of McDonalds being a world-wide restaurant. I mentioned this in the previous reflection. I think that it is also possible that these students were, once again, not able to put them in someone else’s shoes. It is possible that even though they realize the location they like the most exists in other places, they don’t think about the fact that the new student probably went there too. This ability to think of things from another’s point of view is an upper level task that may be more difficult for third graders.

What I learned about my students beyond the objectives was easy for this lesson. It was my objective to get them to learn how to brainstorm for appropriate ideas. However, I learned a great deal about my students’ interests inside and beyond the classroom. I discovered how much they liked some of the management systems that we use in class, how much they think about the procedures intended to keep us safe in the school, and most importantly about the things they like to do outside of school. This is information that will help me relate to them on a more personal level in the future.

At this time I don’t see students needing additional support on picking a topic. The place I do anticipate the need for support is when my students decide that they don’t like the topic that they picked. My plan was to get ever student to have something written down that they are going to write about. I don’t want to hear in this lesson “I don’t know what to write.” My plan that I will use will be to tell students that they must stick with their original plan unless they can convince me that they will do a better job with another idea. I also will evaluate as time goes along when it is too late to make this switch. Students that do get stuck with a topic they don’t like will be given additional support in the future with lessons that ask specific questions for them to write about. This will help them get details down that they can expand on in their final publication.

I think the only thing I might change in the future of this lesson is the number of choices I give the students to write about. I am starting to think that it might be difficult in the future to explain to students how they will write about rules in the same way that they will write about places. My worry at first was that there weren’t going to be enough places around East Lansing to write about, but I think this might have led me down a path where I am about to teach two different groups of students two different things.

As far as my core practice goes, I think the thoughts I had about yesterday’s lesson have just been reinforced. The students are excited about writing for an audience, but that audience isn’t concrete enough for my students to put themselves in the audience’s shoes. I have learned about myself that I need to spend even more time planning and teaching writing. I am still not seeing enough of the connections students might make to lead them as a group down one cohesive and well thought out path. Experience is going to be a big help to me, but I must also be able and willing to find resources that will help me with this planning.

Reflection 1

The purpose of my first lesson was to introduce the students to the writing project that we were going to be doing. The intention was to set the background for the project where the students would get excited about writing for a realistic audience and then get a chance to work together as a class to draft a first attempt. I could see from the number of questions that the students asked that they got really excited about the first part of the lesson. They asked questions like “Are we really getting a new student?” This showed me that they were interested about writing for this target audience. The discussion also went much longer than I intended it to because of the curiosity they had about the things they might write about. I could tell that there was still some underlying confusion when we started to brainstorm and write our class draft together. The piece they were writing was supposed to be for a new student so that they would understand what rules we had at Donley or they could tell about an exciting spot to visit in East Lansing. This came right after we had just given the students new spots in line for when we were moving around the school. The first idea I got when I started trying to draft the class copy was about lining up and it quickly devolved into a how to piece on how we decided to get our spots in line. This was unanticipated by me and I didn’t know how to guide them more in the direction that I was looking for in an authentic piece.

I also think another factor might have come into play with this lesson. We had just gotten done with our writing unit on small moments. There was some evidence that the students were trying to tell about a small moment. The first sign of this was that they told me about the most recent thing that had happened to them in the school. I also noticed that they were trying to give ideas from a first person perspective instead of telling a new student about why we line up they were telling the process of getting their own personal spot.

Beyond my objectives I learned that the students were aware of the writing lessons we had just accomplished and were having a hard time moving to something new. I also found that they were capable of using their own thoughts to start a piece, but they had more trouble when they had to extend a classmate’s idea. This was a new practice to them and one I didn’t explicitly teach that ended up being something important that I should have considered.

I realized after teaching this lesson that I had some major misconceptions that I needed to clear up before I taught the next lesson. Fortunately I planned on the second lesson building upon the first so the changes to the actual lesson didn’t need to be huge, but I did need to make sure I spent more time clarifying what I expected during our brainstorming session. I also realized that the students were going to need a very explicit way to record their ideas while brainstorming because when I left things wide open to them they tended to reach too far outside the box on what they would be able to write.

 When I consider my core practice of trying to write for an authentic audience I learned that I was able to get the students excited about writing for a particular audience. However, I also learned that in the future I might need to find an audience that is a little more concrete. The students were excited about writing for a new student, but they weren’t able to put themselves in that student’s shoes and think about the writing they did on this first day from that point of view. They were only able to think about what they wanted to tell about.

Reflection

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     Students learned how to make personal connections to stories. Students struggled with this concept because it is hard for them to relate things that have happened in their life to a story without teacher support. I found that when I would share my own ideas or model how to make connections, my students would make better connections. I tried to choose stories that they could connect to, like “Arthur Lost a Tooth”, because I know that they talk about losing their teeth all the time. During centers, students were asked to write down parts of a story, and then connect to those parts. Many students would write down the part of the story, and then write down the same thing about themselves. Recognizing this, I was quick to make changes. We started doing activities that involved students to include who, what, where, when, why, and how, when they were making connections. 

     I learned that my students need more support in comprehension. It was hard for them to make connections because they struggled to comprehend stories. I found that when I was there to ask questions or was able to help them during centers, they were able to verbalize their connections more. With that being said, it was harder for them to do the independent work (pen to paper). I saw student progress through our discussions and it was great to see students raise their hands with excitement to share their connections. At the end of my unit, students picked their favorite book from the four Arthur books I read to them. Students made posters to advertise why other students in out building should read the story they chose. I was able to scaffold them into successfully creating a poster by filling out a previous worksheet. They then took their worksheets to create a poster. They were asked to use words like, “you should read this story because it reminded me of…., or made me think about…or I liked that…etc.” Using this as an assessment was really cool. I was able to see students sharing ideas and I saw them discussing why they liked the story they chose. 

     Making connections to support student comprehension was not as easy to teach as I thought. However, I saw improvement in my student’s comprehension because they were very focused on listening to the stories I read, especially he second week. They knew I wanted them to be able to make connections. They would listen very carefully to allow them to give me our class sign of a chain to share their connection. With that being said, students comprehended more to the stories I read, especially the ones they connected to most. We have continued to make connections in our class. It is going to be an on-going concept during out literacy centers for a few more weeks. Each week I see improvement and they are starting to meet our expectations. 
     I have realized that research is very important. It is extremely important to scaffold as well. Sometimes you have to think like the students you are teaching. Imagine yourself sitting in that chair. How would you best understand what you will be teaching? As I moved through my unit plan, I really started to focus on breaking my lessons down, allowing students to focus their thinking on one thing. The biggest thing I would change from my lessons would be breaking the material down. I have finally realized that importance and it is beginning to be something I ALWAYS think about during my planning and teaching. This unit plan taught me a lot, and I will continue to work towards student improvement in comprehension and making connections.

Lesson Reflection 1

My first lesson focused on the purpose of my meaningful writing task for students (the meaningful task to be targeted during the unit is composing a friendly letter to the author of a book students’ liked). I wanted to start at a foundational level, so I had this first lesson focus on reasons for writing letters to other people. In order to get students thinking about purposes of letter-writing, I had them each read different letters that I created and then had them share the purpose of their specific letter. I also used a KWL chart to assess student experiences with letter-writing and to help them make self-connections between the different purposes that they may have had in the past to write letters and the reasoning behind letter-writing. To further personalize the lesson, I also had them write use their journals to write about times when they’ve written letters, to whom these letters were written, for what reasons/purposes they wrote the letters, and they types of messages they conveyed in the letters. After looking over their journals, the KWL chart, and thinking about some of their responses during the lesson, students revealed that they learned that people write letters for many different purposes. They were able to look at the individual letters I gave them and point out the reason the person had written the letter. They also demonstrated through their journal responses their understanding that writing can be used to convey a message to another person who is not present at the same place as they are. They successfully formed self-connections between the focus of the lesson and their own experiences.

However, I did find that there were a couple of students who struggled with reading the letters that I passed out to them. I paired everyone up with a partner and had them read one letter together, but I found that some students dominated the activity by taking hold of the letter and reading it inside their heads, which was no help to their partner, who was struggling with reading. I tried to tend to this by circulating different partnerships and having them read their letters out-loud to me. Also, for the independent journaling activity, some students struggled with interpreting the questions that I put up on the board for them to answer in their journals. Beforehand, I went over the questions and elicited example answers from students, but some students still struggled with the wording of one of the questions (“What messages did you convey to your reader?”). Therefore, I had to readdress and reword the question after numerous questions from students.

Alternate ways that I gauged students’ products was on the amount of depth in their responses. Students who used numerous examples in their answers showed that they were really thinking about the question asked and tying in their own personal experiences. I also relied on the ease and quickness with which they completed their journaling (and answered my questions verbally) as an alternate read of performance. Students who were easily able to verbally respond to my questions in a quick manner showed that they understood the concepts, and did not have to take a lot of time to think about what I was asking or connecting it to their experiences. Also, for students who are struggling readers and writers, I had them verbally talk about their responses for the journaling questions as I circulated the room. This helped me to gauge their understanding despite their weaknesses in the reading/writing aspect of literacy. Therefore, in regards to my students’ literacy practices, I also learned that I may need to find other ways to gauge student understanding in future lessons, since some of them need additional support in reading/writing.

For these students who need additional support, I will use the next lesson to give them opportunities to extend on the main objectives of the previous lesson. As an introductory and connecting activity, we will focus on one specific letter as a class, and will read it together, which will take off the burden of reading it individually. If I were to re-teach this same lesson again, I would do an activity similar to this. I would have us read a letter as a class together and model deciphering the main purpose of that specific letter. I would model my thinking as I read it. Then I would have students proceed onto the partnership reading of different letters. I would be sure to point out that students are to read the letter out-loud and discuss it with one another. I might have a student come up and model the process with me, using a short letter. I would also make sure that the wording in my questions used for the journaling activity were kid-appropriate, so that students would not struggle with what the question was asking. I would model answers for each question by writing it out and leave it up on the ELMO for students to refer back to when it came time for them to individually answer them in the journal. I think these changes would allow students to tackle the tasks with independence and help them to understand the meaning behind me having them do certain tasks. This understanding is crucial as it is a foundational part of my unit that students will be building off of.

So far, I learned that making sure students understand the basics and underlying meaning of writing is of crucial importance in implementing my core practice. I need to continue finding ways to reach each learner in my classroom before moving on. As we continue learning and practicing the steps in the writing process, it is important that my students understand the foundational meaning behind the practice as a whole and each step in it. They need to know this to adequately move from the different steps in the writing process. I need to make sure that I am giving students different facets with which to display their understanding of the concepts taught in different lessons.

reflection from lesson on 10/16

            In my second lesson of my unit, I taught the students about what a lead in a story is, why it is important, the different kind of leads, and how to chose the most appropriate ones for their stories. I did this through first brainstorming with the students what a lead is, discussing how there are three different kinds of leads, used a mentor text to show them how great authors create great leads, and modeled creating a setting, action, and dialogue lead and choosing the best one for my own story. I felt like this lesson went great and that my students really got it. They were really engaged with the lesson and were really interested when I modeled using my own story, which I felt was a better way to teach the students how to make leads than what it would have been by just telling them what the leads are.

            The majority of my students really understood the three different kinds of leads and created great leads for their own stories, making their story better. I think that only a few students stuck with their original lead, the majority of my students changed their lead to make them stronger. There were a few students who when I was circulating around were struggling with creating an action lead and a dialogue lead. They seemed confused about the meaning of the action and dialogue lead and how to create them. They needed a little extra guidance on what the lead was and how to create them. I was able to discuss and trouble shoot with each of those students, before the lesson was over, because there was only a few of them that needed extra support. I feel that after working with them they seemed to be grasping the different leads and helped to give them ideas on how to create each lead.

           

            It may have been that some of my students who were struggling weren’t actually struggling with knowing what each lead was, but rather did not see how these leads fit into their story. Since these stories were their personal narratives they all started their story with how it really happened. They may have had a hard time trying to think of a lead that did not match the exact events in the actual story. For this I could have discussed with them that sometimes we need to add a little imagination to our stories to help them be complete. For instance, if they could not remember what dialogue started their story they could have imagined what could have been said and used that to begin their story. I feel that this may have helped my students not get so stuck on starting their story with, “One day…” and rather would have helped them to create a hook a lot easier.

            After I sat down and rethought through my lesson and about those students who were struggling with creating leads, I began to think about their writing process overall. Many of these students were the same students who had struggled in my first lesson. I thought that it may have been possible that these students felt that their story was perfect because it was their story that they created and did not realize that they needed to go through the revision process to make it better. These students need a little more guidance on how to make a story perfect through revisions particularly in finding different ways to begin their story to really hook the reader. It is hard at that age to see that a piece of writing they have created needs to be changed, because in the past years they have written small pieces and did not have to go through the revision process to make them better. They were already celebrated as perfect. For this reason, the revision process is something that will need to be taught with every piece of writing we have created.

            The next day I quickly went over the leads that we learned the day before and reminded them of the examples that I used. This was because the lesson on leads lead into the lesson on conclusions, because they were using similar skills to create great endings. This also helped me to reiterate to those students who were struggling the day before what the leads were and how to create them.

            I learned a lot about how great my students are with writing in dialogue. My students did a great job incorporating a dialogue lead, as well as dialogue throughout their story. While I was checking their leads many of my students wanted to show me the other parts in their story where they incorporated dialogue.  They were extremely proud of the dialogue they incorporated into their stories.

           

            If I were to teach this lesson again, I would use some of my students’ own work to model the technique we were using in creating new leads. I had my students identify which lead they had and read that lead to the class, but I think that it would have been much more meaningful to them if they could have shared their new lead that they chose. I think that my students did a great job with listening to me model the technique and discuss how my lead improved my story, but it would have added meaning to my students’ work with having a share time at the end. This would have given my students a sense of ownership of their work. It also could have helped my struggling writers hear different lead examples other than mine, which may have helped them think of leads they could use. I feel that this would have caused my students to work a little harder and be more focused on really hooking the reader. They really did do well with this lesson, however and I think that incorporating a peer vote on their best lead already motivated them to create great leads. This small change to the lesson would have taken that ownership a step further.

            I have learned that focusing on one step to the writing process at a time can really help me confer with my students in a much more meaningful and in-depth manner, because these lessons are allowing me to meet with each student (with my MT’s help) everyday to make sure that they are making improvements and are understanding each stage to the revising process. It has taught me that when I am a teacher in the future it is important to not just confer with my students one or two times, but to confer with them daily on the skill that they are focusing on. This will help my students get a much richer understanding of the various writing skills and I feel will greatly improve their writing. I need to continue to learn about conferencing informally and what I can do as a teacher to push my kids to take their writing one step closer each time I conference without taking over their stories. I feel that this will help me help my students even further in developing their writing skills.

Reflection from lesson taught 10/15

On October 15^th, I taught my first lesson in writing that was centered on a district-made checklist that was created to help the students keep them accountable in their own writing process. The checklist when I began planning my lesson was very advanced in the wording and I knew that my students would not be able to understand what it was asking of them. For example, one part of the checklist asked if they had referred to any mentor texts. I knew that this would be hard for my students. I tried to explain it in a kid friendly way the best I could, because I was unsure if I could change the checklist since the district had created it. I then created a worksheet for my students to set two goals for their writing based off of what they had not yet completed in their writing piece and taped those goals to the inside pocket of their writing folder to hold them accountable. The purpose of this lesson was to help my students see that writing is a process and that in their own lives beyond their third grade year they will not be able to produce a great piece of writing without going thru the revision stages. I also wanted them to see how real authors don’t just create great pieces of writing without taking a lot of time to make sure it is the best it can be without error.

            This lesson went really well. The only thing that was difficult for my students was navigating through the checklist on their own and understanding what kind of goals they could set for themselves. After circulating around the room and clarifying student questions about the checklist, I found that the majority of my students were really grasping the purpose of the checklist and created some really good achievable goals for their writing pieces. There were about five of my students that really did not understand what I meant by writing achievable goals for their writing piece based off of the checklist. For example, one of my students wrote, “I want to be a good reader in the fourth grade,” which was completely off-task and showed that he was completely confused. This was however, one of my students who had to be redirected in my lesson, because he was not paying attention.

            After sitting back down again and rethinking the events that transpired in my lesson, I thought that those students who were having a difficult time with the lesson may not have seen the value in the checklist because the first half of the checklist was already completed, and they may have felt that it was redundant. This may have caused them to feel like they had already completed everything on the checklist and began to zone out during my lesson or just checked all of the boxes on the list and then felt that there was nothing more they needed to do. Many of my students at this point still did not grasp that there was more to writing than just writing a first draft. They did not understand that their pieces were not perfected, and this may have clouded their understanding of why we were doing this activity and how these goals would help them.

            The students helped me see that a lot of them really understood how to objectively look through their stories and identify steps that they have not completed and knew how to use the checklist to create great goals for themselves. After this lesson I feel that my students are really beginning to grasp what it means to monitor their own progress. Through this lesson I realized that my students already knew that in writing they can’t publish a story without going through the process of editing and revising, but they just are not sure of all of the areas that need to be worked with before they can publish. Many of my students before going through this checklist had already started the revising process on their own, and it helped me to see that they just need a little extra guidance in what to focus on while editing.

            After the lesson, I had my students leave their goals out on their table with their writing folder. I then walked around the room, read their goals, taped the goals of students who had good achievable goals to their inside pocket of their folder, and then tucked in their checklists into the folder pocket. I will begin my next lesson by addressing misconceptions that I saw and also discussed with the students that before moving onto the next stage the students had to write their two goals and show them to me. I also followed up with the students to discuss with them how to change their goals. I have constantly throughout my lessons referred back to their goals and discussed as we do each step to cross their goals off if they have worked on and completed one of their goals to help them see how they are keeping themselves accountable.

            If I were to re-teach this lesson again I would change the checklist to make it more understandable for my students. I also would probably change the checklist to just pertain to the editing/revising stage of the process. For instance, the first half of the checklist were things that the students did at the very beginning of the writing process, so it was kind of redundant. This I feel would help my students focus on their writing process at the stage they were at. I also would change the way I presented the lesson. There was a lot of explanation with this lesson, so I would probably have the students discuss with me what each step of the checklist meant to them. I also would explain more through modeling rather than explaining the checklist and then on top of that model the process. My kids were somewhat checked out while I was just going over the checklist, but were completely in tune when I was using my own story to illustrate what they were to do. This way I can help model for them rather than explaining and modeling, which will save me in time because I also went over in my time. This would help my students understand the lesson and would help them improve in their own skill without boring them or overwhelming them.

            Through this lesson I learned a lot already about my students’ writing and how to use that knowledge to help me when I conference with my students individually. The goals written and their progress checklist help me to have a base in my conferencing to help me monitor their progress. I also learned from this lesson the importance in allowing students to set their own goals and decide what they need to work on. Not only does it help me to encourage my students, but it gets them more invested in making improvements, because it is more meaningful. I definitely need more practice with helping my students set achievable goals and learning how to use those goals to guide my conferencing. I also would like to learn and develop skills for conducting on-going informal conferences.

Blog Response for Oct 11

            It was interesting reading chapter 8 of Strategies that Work in regards to allowing students to utilize questioning to deepen their thinking and understanding. It made me wonder how I can teach my students different questioning strategies and help them to see how posing questions will further their understanding of the text. How would you teach your students the importance in questioning and how to appropriately question what they’re reading? How do you think teaching your students these techniques will change your classroom environment?

            Many of my students look to me when they have a question and pose the questions to me for me to answer. They don’t know how to pose a question for themselves to challenge their own understanding and deepen their understanding by finding the answer themselves. I really liked the part in the book where it talked about the “knowing when you know and knowing when you don’t know,” I liked how the authors talked about the students having their own sticky notes to mark where they have a question in their reading and then the students move that sticky note to the point in the text where they found the answers. I feel that this technique gives a student a sense of accomplishment and I feel that they will really comprehend what they learned because it wasn’t just a teacher telling them the answer they found it themselves. I feel that this process would have to be modeled to my students several times so that they really understood how to answer their own questions, and to show them how that can deeper their understanding.

            I also really liked the idea of “gaining information through questioning,” because I feel that it can really add to my students’ comprehension of the text if they are actively doing more than just reading the text. Teaching the kids to wonder can open their eyes to so much more information than just reading a text and then putting it down. Having the students fill out an “I wonder” page can make them active participants in what they’re reading and get them more engaged to look for the answer. I feel that this also would have to be modeled several times to my student to help them really understand how to not just wonder about what they are reading, but also to think about the answers, look for the answers in the text, or look for it outside of the text.

            I feel that all of these strategies if used in my classroom would completely change the atmosphere in regards to questions. I think that my students would not just rush through what they are reading but actually take a deeper look at what they are reading and gain a higher sense of engagement with the text. My students would have better comprehension because they would be taking a deeper dive into what they are reading and have a sense of ownership of their own understanding. I think that this would take a lot of modeling in front of my students to help them understand how to question, and how to use their questioning to aide in their comprehension.

I read through Karly’s unit planning. I think that your point with comprehension being extremely important is a great point because you’re right it is needed in every aspect of their lives in school and outside of school. This is a great strategy to focus on.

            You said that you were planning on focusing on picking out important events in stories and summarizing. You also talked about incorporating both teacher-led and student-led methods to your daily routine. Are you going to use this method as a whole class or are you going to work in small groups so that you can differentiate the books you use based on their reading skills and abilities? It sounds like you do not separate your students based on reading levels. I think that peer-to-peer help is great, but how will you make sure that students are not reading above their level and get frustrated and make sure that your higher-level readers will not get bored?

           

            I think it is really cool that you will be incorporating technology/online resources into your lessons, because I agree with you that it may become boring for them to just fill out graphic organizers. It would be neat if they did some sort of project where they do a re-tell of the story they read to a group who did not read the same story. They could do some sort of presentation to “teach” another group which would get the student led teaching in your lesson.

           

            It sounds like you guys already have a lot of systems in place and that your kids are doing a lot of great student led lessons which I think is awesome. It sounds like your classroom community is really supportive and I think you should really monopolize on that! I am really interested to hear about the activities that you come up with because comprehension is so important at every level. I am also really interested to hear how these lessons go and how your students do with learning comprehension skills!