Lesson 4 Reflection

Genre unit day four was definitely one of my favorite lessons thus far. I really felt like the students learned so much content but did it in a way that was new and interesting for them. I also felt that the students did a lot of self-regulating of their own behavior and therefore, I did not have to intervene for behavior management issues as much as I would have expected when introducing a new learning style. We decided to test out the “fishbowl” strategy that we learned about in book club plus! We did alter it a bit for scaffolding purposes but I was very pleased at the result. The students applied the 6 strategies from Strategies that Work by Stephanie Harvey: asking questions, visualizing, determining Importance, synthesizing, inferring, and making connections. They learned these strategies on a level that I truly feel they are likely to consciously or unconsciously use them in the future. They also learned about the genre of historical fiction by listening to and discussing the book Encounter. They also learned about some historical content of Christopher Columbus and the Taino Indian people. Finally, they learned how to be respectful audience members, team members, and practiced their oral speaking skills by working in groups and sharing their answers through a version of a fishbowl.

The students that struggled were the ones that have difficulty working with their classmates and in groups on a regular basis. I have three Asbergers students so this impacts their teamwork skills greatly. Yet, despite these issues I still feel that they had a meaningful  experience and learned the content while engaging in the lesson. During day four I learned that my students are actually quite thoughtful even while working with their peers and engaging in a student led discussion as opposed to a teacher led discussion. They seemed to really love the fishbowl!

If we were to re-teach this lesson we would have the students who are in the center of the fishbowl call on students in the outside of the fishbowl when they are ready forthem to add their ideas. This time we added some of our thoughts and expanded on what the students in the center said before calling on those in the outside of the circle but we think it may be more beneficial for the students in the center to call on those in the outside and then once all students have given their thoughts we could expand on their ideas and add any needed details. We think this would help the students to learn how to have a discussion as a class without us having to lead it all the time. We also think it would help them to take ownership of their thoughts and ideas and to realize that everyone in the class can help each other learn about each strategy and idea. It also helps students to understand how to be a respectful audience member and participant. If others are talking while they are talking they will understand what it feels like to be the teacher when they are talking.Collecting the notes from each group helped us to assess the groups beyond what they said in the fishbowl. It helped us to remember what they said and see where they are at in terms of the different strategies.

Lesson 2 Reflection

On day two of the genre unit we had student working with the rough draft of their change papers that they wrote the previous day. They worked with their peers to help them edit and revise their papers. They began by reading their papers aloud to each other.  They worked with a set of “guiding questions” to help keep them aware and focused on the important issues. I know that by working with their peers they will learn about the writing process and be more cognoscente of the issues in their own writing after peer editing. Most of the students did very well with this lesson. At the end of the peer editing time I asked them the following questions about what they thought of the process:

-How was peer editing helpful? 

-What did you learn from your partner’s suggestions and

this process? 

-Would you like to engage in peer editing in the future? 

-Are there any changes that you think would make this process helpful?

Most of the responses were very positive. I did, however, have a few students that struggled with the partner aspect of peer editing.  These are the same students that normally struggle when working with their peers so I expected this but encouraged them to try to work and help each other.

Something I learned about my students that was not necessarily an objective was how much they enjoy reading their writing aloud. I think this was beneficial in improving their oral skills but also it allowed them to have some ownership over their own writing. Even though they were working to correct each others writing and getting constructive feedback they seemed to be genuinely proud of what they had written. Many of our students really need this boost in confidence along with an improvement in verbalizing their ideas and reading with enthusiasm.

I will re-teach the peer editing process in the upcoming genre unit when we have the students going through the writing process again. We will review how to give constructive feedback, highlight the writers strengths, and give them suggestions on organization, voice, grammar, etc.

If we were to re-teach this lesson we would require the students to write comments and suggestions for their partner and give that piece of paper to their partner to help them partner edit. We did not do this because we wanted them to have a conversation with each other about their papers rather than just writing on each other’s paper, but then we think that some students went to make their changes and forgot some of the things they had talked about with their partner. We think a good way to solve this would be to tell them to discuss their work first and to go through both papers and the comments for each paper and then to take a minute to write a few of the most important comments for each other. We would also ask them to write a question that they have for their partner that they would like to be clarified in their final draft. When we asked the students what they would change if we were to do peer editing again, a couple students said they would like to have written comments and we agree with them, but we also do not want to lose the discussion element of peer editing. We think by having the conversation and the written comments the students would be able to edit their rough draft better, which would then lead to stronger final drafts. Having the students write comments for their partners would also help us to assess the students and how the peer editing time helped them.

Lesson 1 Reflection

On the first day of teaching I was a bit nervous but after looking back and reflecting on the events I can see how beneficial all of the choices were and how my students and I were able to learn and grow.

This was the first day of the fifth grade’s “genre unit” curriculum. The students were able to make a personal connection to the concept of change that will be present in all of the texts that we will read during the unit. Students were able to make a personal connection in their own lives prior to reading these texts. They gained valuable experience with the writing process as I had them doing a writing and beginning to edit it. I know that making real world connections allowed our students to better relate to the characters in the books because they will better understand the situations that they experience. So overall, students were preparing to make text-to-self connections. The students that struggled with this were the students who have struggled with the writing process in the past. The writing topics our students have had so far are: my special place, turkey writing, and a haunted house writing so this was a more difficult and personal topic than we had  ever presented our students with. 

The main goal of the lesson was to allow students an opportunity to make a connection with the theme of change. I did , however, learn about how my students approach the writing process as I coached many one-on-one through their brainstorming. Although this wasn’t a goal of my lesson I feel that I have a better understanding of their thought process when beginning a writing.

I have begin conferencing with students while showing them their corrected papers. I spend about 5-10 minutes whenever I can throughout the hectic days with each students to discuss their writing, what the challenges seemed to be, their strengths, weaknesses, and set a “writing goal” with them for their next writing piece.  I have a large table in the back of the room near my desk and this is wonderful for having writing conferences with my students. I call students to work with me when they have silent reading time, have finished their work, or during any other times that I feel conferencing would be appropriate throughout the day. Conferencing is something I will do with all of my students because since it is still so early in the year, I feel that they all need “additional support” in some category or area of their writing; they can improve in some way. 

If we were to teach this lesson again we would go over the revising and editing process with the students and what it means to revise and edit (we have added this in red to our lesson plan). We feel that this would help the students have a more meaningful revising and editing process because we noticed that some students only make a few changes for revising and editing and then are ready for their final draft. We think the peer- editing lesson tomorrow will help with this, but we also want our students to be able to revise and edit their own work to make their writing stronger without having to always rely on their peers to help them. We think this change in the lesson would help to strengthen students’ final drafts.

GLT

I was excited to teach my literacy lessons as I am to teach all my lessons. The lessons That I taught were all similar to what my CT has done in previous years. My CT also did a similar lesson before I took over to give me an idea of how it might look. This was helpful not only for me, but also for my students. For my students to have a similar lesson prior to mine made the transition to my teaching easier when the class had some idea of what was going to be expected of them in the first few lessons.

I feel that my lessons went well. I was surprised how well the students behaved for me during my lessons even while my CT was not in the room. Class management was my biggest concern entering GLT. I had been in charge of the class multiple times while my CT was out of the room and it did not always go as well as I would have liked. This may have been because it was the end of the day or during a time where I was not so sure what they should be doing because my CT had to leave without briefing me.

The first two lessons focused on one mentor text where they had a chance to notice how the mentor text arranged things and we had a chance as a class to go over these and make a class copy with notes. The following lessons followed this same format and that made it easier in my opinion for the class to notice things that were the same and different from the previous texts. With each mentor text the lessons went better. I felt like I had control of the classroom and the students were staying on task for the most part.

If I had this to do over I may have changed the amount of time spent noticing on mentor texts after the first one. There were many students that finished quickly and I would have liked to have something more than just trying to get them to expand on what they have done.

I will not be continuing to teach writing, but I knew this before I started. My CT did not want to give up literacy completely yet. By the end of my GLT I was ready to have a break from it, but I would feel confident if I was asked to continue teaching.

I would have liked to have done some lessons that may have been more entertaining to my students, but I think that most of my students learned what I wanted them to learn.

The thing I feel I most need to work on after GLC is planning my time better. i do know now how I would plan my time for the lessons that I did, but some things I guess you just need to try before you know.

GLT

I was very excited to start my Guided Lead Teaching. The first week of my Guided Lead Teaching I didn't teach. I started the second week. I thought my lessons went very smooth and my students understood them.

I taught reading. I had a mini-lesson everyday followed by conferencing with my students. I started with questioning. We talked about different ways to keep track of our thoughts. I had my students explain ways they used. Then I had students brainstorm other ways to keep track of their questions. Many students said they write them on sticky-notes. Many students also said they don't go back to their question after they write it down. Many students said they don't really do anything with their questions. We suggested some ways and I asked students to try one method we brainstormed. I felt like my lesson could have gone a little better, so I added more to my second day.

I went back and talked about questioning again. This time I decided to read a picture book to my class and have them write down their questions. We made a T-chart with questions, answers, and evidence. I asked my students to support their answers using evidence from the book. My students took well to this idea, as we had a large group discussion about questions and answers from the picture book. I had students continue to try to use this type of organizer during their reading. My class continued to use the question and answer organizer for our classroom re-aloud book. We are still using it as we read.

The majority of my lessons were based around using evidence to support their thoughts. We talked about how their thoughts change as they read and how this helps them to tell the story. We used another organizer for this lesson, which took up the majority of my lessons, to help my students chart their thoughts.

My students have used a lot of organizers during the course of the year to help them throughout their books. The one thing I noticed when conferences with my students was that many of them decided to try out our new organizers while reading their personal books. I think many of my students have found a liking for the question and answer organizer.

One of my favorite lessons was called Kitchen Gadgets. I brought in a handful of different kitchen utensils such as a bottle opener, cheese grader, nut cracker, and many others. I had my students work with their table groups and observe the objects. They were able to guess what the object was and use evidence to support it. For example, the bottle opener, many of them said they had one in their home, or it had grooves to help grip a bottle. My students said they had a great time with the activity and they really used their evidence to support their answers. We had a great group discussion about the different objects.

I talked to my mentor teacher and I will continue to teach reading from now on. I am very excited that my lesson's went well. I am also excited that my mentor teacher enjoyed my lessons.

Genre Unit Reflection 3

Students learned a lot in this lesson. They learned about the 6 strategies from Strategies that Work by Stephanie Harvey (Asking questions, Visualizing, Determining Importance, Synthesizing, Inferring and Making Connections). We discussed each strategy, what it means, and an example of when we could use this strategy when reading Encounter, the story I had read them the previous day. They had been introduced to these strategies before, but had not gone in depth with them so I felt that making the connections to Encounter would be very helpful to their learning process. They were later given the chance to focus on one specific strategy with a group and to make more connections with this strategy to Encounter. I re-read Encounter to them before doing this. We then did a version of the fishbowl and had the students sit in a circle and when it was their group’s turn to share they came to the center of the circle and shared their findings and then asked the outside of the fishbowl to add anything else. This allowed me to see which strategies the students were struggling with and also which specific students were struggling more than others. Synthesizing is a difficult strategy for the students to understand. I could tell this group was struggling so I asked them specific questions that they could answer and use as their ideas to share with the class. I said to them, “Columbus is often looked at as a hero, so that’s something we already know, but how does this book show him in a different way?” I also asked, “How does what you already know about Columbus (hero, discovered America) and what you just learned about him inform you about his life and what happened with his discovery? How does this help you to better understand the story?” This helped them to focus their thoughts and work together to have ideas to share with the class. The class seemed to struggle with this strategy too because the outside of the fishbowl didn’t have much to add after the group shared their ideas. I will re-teach this material when we read Guests. When I’m reading aloud to the students I plan to do think alouds to help them have a better understanding of the story and I will also be sure to synthesize with my think alouds. I’ll be sure to tell the students that I am synthesizing and why it is synthesizing. At other times, I will stop and ask for students to synthesize from what we’ve read. I hope that this will reinforce the synthesizing strategy and help students to think about this while they are reading on their own.

Beyond my objectives, I learned about my students note-taking processes. I gave them the option of taking notes while working with their groups so that they would be able to reference them when sharing in the fishbowl. I found it interesting that every group took notes and they relied a lot on them when sharing. I’m glad that I gave them this option, because I think if they’d tried to discuss the strategies and then share without any notes they would have had a difficult time. However, I was impressed by their note-taking skills. They all had taken notes that were very helpful to them and I think it made the sharing of information more successful. I will keep this in mind for further lessons and fishbowl activities; note taking is helpful to the students. It also helped me to assess them because even though I listened to all of their conversations I couldn’t remember everything they said after. I collected their notes, which helped me to remember.

Another alternate read or something that I learned about my students that I did not realize going into the lesson is that they have a hard time delving deeper into material. They tend to give me the very basic answer and don’t think further into what they are reading or what I’m asking them to respond to. They think of the quick, more obvious answer and stop there. This is something that my CT and I talked about and are really trying to push them to work toward thinking beyond the obvious. We are trying to do this in all subjects so I think that will really help when it comes to their writing and sharing of information with the class as well.

If I were to re-teach this lesson I would have the students who are in the center of the fishbowl to call on students in the outside of the fishbowl when they were ready for them to add their ideas. This time I added some of my thoughts and expanded on what the students in the center said before calling on those in the outside of the circle but I think it may be more beneficial for the students in the center to call on those in the outside and then once all students have given their thoughts I could expand on their ideas and add any needed details. I think this would help the students to learn how to have a discussion as a class without me having to lead it all the time. I also think it would help them to take ownership of their thoughts and ideas and to realize that everyone in the class can help each other learn about each strategy and idea.

We didn’t have any time for retelling so I will do that with tomorrow’s lesson. I’ve also decided to make it more exciting by having the students act out their retelling with groups and then share with the class. I’m excited to see how that goes tomorrow!

Genre Unit Reflection 2

Students learned a lot about how to edit their paper. I spent a lot of time going through my example paper and editing it based on peer editing questions. I went through my paper paragraph by paragraph asking the students questions from the peer editing list such as “is the central idea or point supported by important and relevant details, examples, and/or anecdotes?” If they told me no, I asked them what they would change and for suggestions. They did a great job giving me suggestions of how to make the paper stronger. They learned how to use the peer editing questions to help their partner improve their paper. They were then given time to do this with their partner and as I walked around I heard a lot of good conversations. They were staying on track and really working to give each other comments and suggestions. I also heard them asking questions when they were unsure of something in their partner’s paper, which I was very impressed by. I did of course have a few students who said they had no comments or questions for their partners so they were struggling with the peer editing process. As I was walking around I noticed two groups who had written this on their peer editing form, so I sat with these groups and asked them more specific questions in order to help them peer edit with their partner.

Beyond my objectives I learned that my student really value the opinions of their peers. They were very open to the suggestions of each other and really wanted to help each other improve their writings. I was worried they would give quick comments and not fully engage in this activity since they have not done anything like this yet this year. I also had to remind them that they do not have to change everything that their peer suggests, but that they should take it into consideration. I learned a lot about how my students work together and that they enjoy learning from each other, which is good to know for planning future lessons. I will try to incorporate partner work and group work whenever possible so that they can learn from each other and enjoy their learning process as well. I think it’s important for literacy learners to engage in peer work and I’m glad that my students realized the importance of this as well.

As I walked around to work with students while they were peer editing I also noticed a couple students who are still struggling with their rough draft writing and needed additional help. After they finished their peer editing they were given time to make any changes their friend suggested and then work on writing their final draft. I spent this time working with struggling students to help them improve their rough drafts. I looked at their five square organizers with them and helped them to organize those in a way that would help them to fix their rough draft. I asked them if their draft was saying what they wanted to say, including all of the details they wanted the reader to know about. With all 3 students who I worked with this led to a conversation about what they wanted to say and what they were missing in their paper. I helped them to form their thoughts and then gave them some of the remaining time to fix their rough draft. I reminded them not to rush into their final draft until they were satisfied with their rough draft. I will be sure to pay extra attention to these students’ papers when I’m grading their final drafts and I will conference with them to continue to help them with their writing process. I will conference with other students too, but I will begin with these to be sure they have their ideas fresh in their mind when we are talking about their papers. We have team time at the end of the day every day where we only go to work with our team time buddies Thursdays and Fridays so Mondays through Wednesdays we do mini grammar lessons or work to catch up on work. This is the time that I will be able to conference with students about their writings while others are catching up on other work or working on their grammar.

If I were to re-teach this lesson I would require the students to write comments and suggestions for their partner and give that piece of paper to their partner to help them partner edit. I did not do this because I wanted them to have a conversation with each other about their papers rather than just writing on each other’s paper, but then I think that some students went to make their changes and forgot some of the things they had talked about with their partner. I think a good way to solve this would be to tell them to discuss their work first and to go through both papers and the comments for each paper and then to take a minute to write a few of the most important comments for each other. I would also ask them to write a question that they have for their partner that they would like to be clarified in their final draft. When I asked the students what they would change if we were to do peer editing again, a couple students said they would like to have written comments and I agree with them, but I also do not want to lose the discussion element of peer editing. I think by having the conversation and the written comments the students would be able to edit their rough draft better before moving on to their final draft.

An alternate read or something that I learned about my students that I did not know going into the lesson was their peer editing skills. I knew that they had not done it yet this year, but I had assumed that they would have past experience with it. It was interesting to listen to their conversations. Some students had great conversations that seemed to be helpful to their partners, but others weren’t sure what to say. The questions I gave them seemed helpful, but sometimes they still weren’t able to answer them or help their partner. I had modeled what to discuss with their partner for peer editing using a paper that I wrote on the same topic, which seemed to really help them understand what I was asked for. However, some seem to lack the oral skills to have this type of conversation with their peers. They were answers the questions yes or no and not continuing with the conversation about what made the answer yes or what to fix in order to change the answer from no to yes in their partner’s paper. That is certainly something I will have to think about before I do peer editing again. My CT and I have talked about doing more Readers’ Theatre to help my students with their oral skills, but I also think they need conversational skills. If anyone has any suggestions for the students who got stuck that would be great!

Here are the peer-editing questions that the students were given to start their discussions of each others papers after reading their paper aloud to their partner:

· Do they have a strong/exciting lead?

· Is the central idea or point of the writing clear?

· Is the central idea or point supported by important and relevant details, examples, and/or anecdotes?

· Does the writing begin with an interesting and engaging lead, continue with a middle that supports and develops the point, and an end that summarizes this point?

· Is the writing interesting with engaging words and different sentence lengths and types?

· What do I as the listener think is good about the writing?

· Do I have any questions and/or suggestions for the writer?

· Do they have a strong ending?