Inquiry 2 part E

Reflection 1

     We did a very explicit word sort as a whole group on Monday after our pre-assessment. I was very happy with the way the students followed along with the lesson and how smoothly it seemed to flow. I was able to engage the students and have them come up and sort the words on the smartboard.
      I did discover the value of doing the pre-assessment on Friday. I discovered that the students have a pretty good mastery of spelling with long i, only 2 students missed more than 1 of the words. Had I had all weekend to work with this data I would have created either, A. a more difficult pre-assessment to see which other i patterns they might struggle with or B, rework our word sort accordingly and introduce 4 patterns instead of just 3. I would add in the tricky y (we call him robber y, who steals the sound of i).
    Instead I have found myself introducing these concepts in on Wednesday (as I introduced my centers and how to work in them, Tuesday).
     However, because the students seemed to have a high level of mastery of the patterns assessed, I was able to engage my lower learners in the word sort! This was very exciting to me because, it is very important to me that every student is given the opportunity to be successful.



What did students learn and which students struggled with the lesson?
     
 All of my students struggled with the 1st lesson of our word study, however I was able to quick teach the topic again the following day and have them better understand the patterns. Understanding why or how to learn and use the patterns was a more difficult task.

• What are alternate reads (interpretations) of your students’ performance or products?

 I was shocked to see that one of my lowest readers was actually really good at spelling. At first we thought she had cheated on the pre-assessment but when we completely isolated her for the post assessment she still scored really high. Both my MT and I are a little mystified by these results and are struggling with what to make of them and how to move forward with this information.

• What did you learn about your students’ literacy practices that extend beyond your objectives?

     I learned that my students lack the skill to  advocate for themselves. On test day, some of my high achievers were asking me what a word meant. I was very disappointed to discover that they spent all week working with words and managed to now understand them. Then I began to notice their coping skills in reading conferences, instead of confronted unknown words, they skimmed them and moved on and were unable to tell me what they meant or use context clues to decipher them. This was very a disheartening but insightful discovery.

• When and how will you re-teach the material to students who need additional support?
     
The benefit of setting up my word study with center work throughout the week is that it gives my students the time to work with the new knowledge and me the opportunity to observe how they work with the material and reteach those who need reteaching or more repetition.

• If you were to teach this same lesson again, what would you do differently and how do you think the
changes would improve students’ learning?

 I would find a way to get more students involved in the lesson at the same time instead of just one at a time. I felt like I lost half of the classes attention every time I had one student come up to sort a word. (We ended up discussing and then sorting up front on the SMARTtboard, one word at a time.)

• What did you learn so far about implementing your ‘core practice’ and what do you need to do to
continue your professional learning?
 
  When I began this project I was not really sure of how studying vowel patterns would help my students spelling. This was not something I was taught in school explicitly. Now I realize that more or less it helps on a deeper level of thinking that we are working them towards. First it helps students to recognize when reading unknown words, what sound the vowel will make and therefore help them to correctly sound out the word. Plus the constant exposure to these words and their patterns forced them to notice the patterns, this is where the spelling aspect comes in.