Inquiry 2 Lesson Reflection

Reading About Chocolate

During this lesson, I read aloud to my students How Chocolate is Made. They were all excited about the book and eager for me to begin reading. This read aloud went well. For the most part, my students were engaged and curious to know how chocolate is made. There were a few moments when some of my students were talkative. They were talking about the book, but blurted out between pages. This was distracting both to me as the reader and to some of the other students as listeners. 

After reading the book aloud, I had my student verbally retell the sequence of events, using the transition words/phrases "First", "Then", "Next", "After that", and "Finally". For of these transition words/phrases, students told me one sentence followed the sequence in the book. For this part, the majority of my students wanted to participate and share their ideas. One student skipped one of the steps in the sequence. When this happened, the other students blurted out to tell them that they had forgotten something. I told them that that was one of the parts of the sequence, but I thought there was something else that had happened first. The, another student shared the missing part of the sequence. As my students worked together to do the retelling, I modeled for them drawing a quick sketch of what was happening. I modeled this because I am going to have them do the same sketches for the next lesson. Then they are going to use these sketches to write sentences to make a summary of the book. My students enjoyed making fun of my terrible sketches on the Smartboard :)

For my students that had trouble with this retelling, I would like to look at the pictures they are going to draw in the next lesson to see how they are doing with their retelling skills. For the students that miss a part of the retelling, I would like to talk to them individually about the book's sequence to bridge that gap.

Inquiry 3 Part A (Step 3)

STEP 3: Finally, consider ‘what these events might mean’ and ‘implications for your practice.’

Think about the instructional context in which you are learning to teach literacy and how that may have influenced your teaching experiences and opportunities for professional learning during Guided Lead Teaching. Jot down notes about the following:

·       Review your notes from Inquiry One regarding the literacy resources and programs available to you, and think about what part of your curriculum your literacy unit fit within (e.g., guided reading program, daily five, writing workshop, book club, teaching from the basal reading program).

o   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?

§  We do not have a scripted program like Reading Street. For third grade, Holt is creating a curriculum, so I was able to follow those loose guidelines.

§  This let me add my own ideas to what the curriculum had already suggested,

o   What was unproblematic and/or challenging about planning a unit in this context?

§  It was somewhat challenging, since it made me feel a little overwhelmed. I felt pressure to come up with creative ideas.

o   What obstacles did you face? How did you overcome them?

§  Timing. This was hard for me, mostly in my first few lessons.

§  I began to use a timer to hold me accountable for my 15-minute time limit.

§  I also think I tried to cover too much material in some lessons. This made me feel pressured to get through everything, which didn’t help my timing problem.

o   How did working on developing your ‘core practice’ influence the types of learning opportunities you were able to offer your students?

§  Determining importance in text

§  I tried to focus my lessons on not only what the text features were, but how they could be used to help readers (week 1)

§  I tried to focus my lessons on how the text structure (sequence of events) could help my readers understand the text (week 2)

o   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.

§  I had a hard time coming up with ways to assess my students. I wanted the activities to be engaging, but also show me what my students had learned. This was a challenge, and something I learned how to do more as my unit progressed. Talking with my mentor teacher helped me see how different activities were more beneficial than others.

o   What enabled you to be successful?

§  My mentor teacher. She was there to help me out in whatever way I needed. She pointed me to a lot of different resources, both in our classroom and online.

·       Also review the ideas you discussed in your reflections on your two lessons for Inquiry Two (what your students learned, what you learned, what you would do differently), and think about your unit as a whole.

o   Did the unit proceed as you expected? Why or why not?

§  Yes, but I was a little discouraged at the end of the first week. My students did not do as well with finding and using text features as I would have hoped. I think I tried to cover too many of them in a short amount of time, leaving some of my students confused as to what certain features were.

o   What surprises or “aha moments” did you experience?

§  I was surprised by the amount of participation that happened during my second week when we did a verbal retelling of the text I read. I was not expecting my students to be quite that enthusiastic, since they had not shown me that before.

o   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 need to learn more about how to engage my students while still teaching them valuable information. This was one of my biggest struggles, which I think also contributed to the timing (stated above).

Ashley Perales - Inquiry 3 Part A Step 3

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?

o   I was expected to use the Oakland Writing Curriculum as a guideline, but I could add my own ideas to the curriculum. The unit I created was based off of the writing curriculum, but I threw in a lot of different ideas and created graphic organizers on my own.

·      What was unproblematic and/or challenging about planning a unit in this context?

o   I found it very helpful to have the curriculum as a guideline and I was able to use it for ideas if I wanted to. Some of the ideas and lessons didn’t line up with what I wanted to do, so I had to create them on my own, but it wasn’t challenging because I already had an idea of what I wanted to teach.

·      What obstacles did you face? How did you overcome 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.

o   Students weren’t motivated to write at all, which was an obstacle because I had to somehow create a fun and engaging writing unit that the students would enjoy. Since the students are very opinionated, I thought that this lesson would be fun for them and would give them a chance to share their own ideas on a topic of their choice, but it was much more difficult than I had expected.  I was able to overcome this by following my MT’s lead and creating a news show that would report each day during writing time, focusing on the students’ opinions and support statements.

·      What enabled you to be successful?

o   Help and guidance from my MT was very encouraging and allowed me to be successful because she would always give me ideas and suggestions. Since she has been teaching this group of students for the past two years, she has gotten to know them very well and knows what types of activities/teaching styles work best for them.

·       Also review the ideas you discussed in your reflections on your three lessons for Inquiry Two (what your students learned, what you learned, what you would do differently), and think about your unit as a whole.

·      It was nice that I was able to make changes as I went along on my unit plan, because I made changes on a daily basis. The main change that I made was creating examples and modeling the writing process for my students. This is the change that had the largest impact on the overall success of my students’ learning and their essays.

·      Did the unit proceed as you expected? Why or why not?

o   For the most part, the unit proceeded as I had expected. As I said earlier, there were some things that I had to change, but I followed my outline that I had created and incorporated the same ideas and lessons that I had in my lesson plan. The lessons that I adapted were simply edited in that I added more details so the students would have a better understanding of what they were supposed to do.

·      What surprises or “aha moments” did you experience?

o   When I realized how graphic organizers help the students to gather and organize their ideas

o   Now, students will share their opinions and will begin by saying “I have an opinion that…” and they will explain using support statements during our discussions

o   After reading the students’ essays, I was very surprised to see how well they turned out because their writing has grown a lot throughout this unit.

·      What do you still need to learn about teaching in this target area, about developing your 'core practice' and about teaching literacy in general?

o   How to make writing more fun, engaging, and interesting for the students

o   How to help students develop basic writing skills and mechanics in their writing

o   When to correct spelling mistakes that students make

Inquiry 3 Part A

(Whitney) Inquiry 3 Part A section 3

·      To what extent were you 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 MT and I were creating this curriculum. I was given full freedom, all that was asked was that I included word sorts on a daily basis in some way.

·         Most of the spelling lists came from Teachers pay teachers (Denise purchased them for me as a guide).

·       What was problematic or challenging about planning a unit in this context?

·         I have never been taught explicitly the things I was asked to teach (spelling patterns for long vowels sounds).

·         I was unclear as to how the students would or could use this information, the connection between sound and spelling if the words were unknown was difficult to understand at first.

·         Organizing all of the pieces into manageable parts

·         Introducing it to my students without overwhelming them, building the routines

·               What obstacles did you face? How did you overcome them?

·         student engagement and understanding. I was finally able to explain to them clearly how learning these patterns could help them or how they could use this knowledge

·         organization, word study involving centers requires organization, especially when attempting to give students free choice of how they learn. We just needed time to build the routines, perseverance!

·               How did working on developing your ‘core practice’ influence the types of learning opportunities you were able to offer your students?

o   By focusing in on how to help my students use their vocabulary skills I was able to better guide them in the lessons. I was able to model ways in which they can directly and immediately use this knowledge. This in turn gave my students more purpose and drive to learn.

·               What dilemmas did you face and how did you manage them?

o        Organization was a big dilemma. When combining organization with free choice in 3^rd grade, there is room for a lot of chaos. I gave my students the choice, “show me that you can choose to work well and have a say in how you learn, otherwise I will have to make the choice for you.”

·               What enabled you to be successful?

·         My MT, she was very helpful in filling in any gaps of understanding I had (when I remembered to ask)

·         I was able to put in a ton of time to create and organize the structure of our word study program.

·         The more I worked with the material the more confident I became in what I was teaching.

·               Did the unit proceed as expected? Why or why not?

·         Somewhat. I set myself up to expect chaos. I have worked in a Montessori and seen organized chaos at its best and I know how powerful it can be. I also know that it takes a ton of organization, classroom management, and practice.

·         I had hoped to see results more quickly than I did but upon further reflection realized that it would take time. My students needed to learn the routines before they could focus all their cognitive energy on the skill to be learned. Just as in math where I had to teach them to use a ruler before I could expect them to measure with it.

·               What surprise or “aha moments” did you experience?

o   The most significant moment of my guided lead teaching occurred in week 2. I am a little embarrassed to admit it but I cannot deny how it changed my teaching and thinking about teaching. During week two as I was about to introduce our new vowel patterns for long o a student raised her hand to ask why we were learning these patterns (this student is constantly being disrespectful and I feel that her question was meant in that manner, but it turned into a useful one!). It was in this moment that I realized I still was unsure of how learning these patterns would help my students spell better. It was in this moment that I was able to put into words just exactly what wordy study would do for my students and how they would use it and I was able to explain it to them in a simple, clear, and concise way.

What do you still need to learn about teaching in this target area, about developing your ‘core practice’ and about teaching literacy in general?

·         I am still working on perfecting the assessment piece of my target area. I would like to spend more time on applying the skills learned in a way that allows me to see the difference between my students already knowing the word and actually using the patterns.

Inquiry 3 - Part A (Step 3)

·      To what extent were you 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?

o   I was given a lot of freedom

o   We use guided reading groups during Reading Workshop so I decided to fit my unit into that, as well as into whole group lessons

o   I chose to use a narrative piece since that is where we were in our curriculum plan (Narrative Text Structures)

o   Reader’s Theater was not something they had done in class or were planning to do all year

·       What was problematic or challenging about planning a unit in this context?

o   I had never seen a Reader’s Theater before or taught one so I didn’t know the steps you would have to take to prepare students for a performance

o   I was creating lessons for a guided reading group as well as a whole group so I had to adjust them accordingly

o   Hard to teach Reader’s Theater to whole group and deciding how to break down a script

o   Helping the students understand why Reader’s Theater is helpful to their literacy learning, to help them be aware of their own learning

o   Finding appropriate level readings for entire class

·               What obstacles did you face? How did you overcome them?

o   Students did not want to do the performance because they were shy so I had to conference with them and their parent to understand why they didn’t want to do it. We also talked to the rest of the class one day about the appropriate feedback to give. We guaranteed positive feedback through stars and wishes.

o   I struggled with having enough time. Because of this I had to extend the unit a few days to make sure students were ready and felt comfortable enough to perform.

o   Students struggled with focusing on the task by acting out. I also had one on one conversations with them to figure out why they were having trouble.

·               How did working on developing your ‘core practice’ influence the types of learning opportunities you were able to offer your students?

o   I was able to tie whole group lessons to guided reading group lessons

o   I used techniques the students had previously learned in guided reading groups to help with Reader’s Theater (echo reading, choral reading, etc.)

·               What dilemmas did you face and how did you manage them?

o        Shy students that didn’t want to perform.           

§  Had meetings with them and class to ensure positive feedback

o   Student’s that were afraid of what others may think

§  Stars and Wishes

o   Keeping them on task during small group

§  Different management techniques

·               What enabled you to be successful?

o        A mentor teacher that was very successful with my plans

o        Reflecting on my lesson each day to see what went well and what I should work on

·               Did the unit proceed as expected? Why or why not?

o   No not at all, it took the students a lot more time to rehearse the script than I thought. I had to add on two additional days to help them prepare.

o   I also didn’t have very high expectations for the progress that the students would make because of how long it took them to complete each lesson. Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised by their post assessment; they all grew a lot as fluent readers.

·               What surprise or “aha moments” did you experience?

o   I thought that all of the students would be very excited to perform this, especially since they are all very outgoing children. Instead they all mentioned how they didn’t want to do it because they didn’t want to stand up in front of the class.

o   When I made the connection about a student acting out in the guided reading group because he was nervous to perform in fear of other students making fun of him.

What do you still need to learn about teaching in this target area, about developing your ‘core practice’ and about teaching literacy in general?

o   This was just one small way to help students with their fluency; there are many other ways to do this.

o   I would also like to develop a better way of assessing their progress

o   Differentiating instruction to many students.