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.
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