Genre Unit Reflection 1

Students learned more about historical fiction. We reviewed what historical fiction is since they studied it in the last genre unit and we are continuing it with this genre unit. The students then learned that they will be reading two historical fiction stories where the main character has to deal with change. We talked about text to self connections and that it is important for them to try to relate to the characters in the stories so they can fully understand what is happening. We also reviewed what a good lead and ending entail. Even though it wasn’t part of my objective, as I was teaching I realized that it would be important to review because some of my students are still really struggling with this. I gave them an example of when I had to deal with change, moving to college. I asked them to give examples of good leads for this topic to help them have a greater understanding of what a good lead is. I think this helped them to learn more about good leads, but we will continue to focus on this when they do their peer editing tomorrow. I also learned that some of my students are struggling with using their five square organizer to help them write their rough draft. As I was walking around and helping students with their five squares and rough drafts I realized that some students are doing a wonderful job using their five square to help their writing and other students are still struggling. I spent some extra time with these students as the others were writing. As I already stated I will continue to re-teach a good lead and good ending with the peer- editing lesson tomorrow. I plan to give students an example of a paper that I wrote to have them help me edit it based on the peer editing questions they will be using with a partner. I will purposely write a weak beginning and ending so that the students can have practice improving them, which will also lead to a conversation about what a good lead and ending entail. I will also use a five square to show my students how I transferred my information from my five square to my rough draft and how it was helpful to organize my ideas. Hopefully this will reinforce the ideas that my students need review of. Even those students who are doing a good job with their lead, ending, and five square can benefit from this review because there’s always something to improve on. Also, they can help give examples, which their peers can learn from as we discuss the ideas. If I were to teach this lesson again I would go over the revising and editing process with the students and what it means to revise and edit. I noticed that some students only make a few changes for revising and editing and then are ready for their final draft. I think the peer- editing lesson will help with this, but I also want my 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. I think this change in the lesson would help to strengthen students’ final drafts. Looking for alternative interpretations of my students’ products is difficult for me. I think the most important thing to look at is that even though my students are writing a rough draft it does not mean that they are not struggling with their work. Some students who I thought were working well and seemed to be writing just fine were not. When I walked around and checked in with students I found that I needed to stop and spend extra time with certain students. Having the time to do this I think was very helpful to those students, especially the lower students in my class. I also realized that even higher level students can be pushed further. At first I went to work with the lower level students, but then when taking a second to make an alternate read of my teaching I decided to check in with some of the higher level students to make sure that they were challenged and know I except a lot from their work. I hope to see this show in their final drafts as I pushed them to really think about the details of their writing since they already had a good lead and were on the right track with their work. Overall, this lesson involved a lot of students work time, which was great because I had the time to check in with many students to see how they were doing and give them one on one help.