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.
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