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!
No comments:
Post a Comment