Reflect and Redirect

This semester has made me look at writing and reading differently. Although, throughout the education program the reading and writing have been a huge focus, as they should be, this class has helped me look at things in a different perspective. I think of the biggest things I have learned is how to be an innovative teacher. Don’t be afraid to take risks in a classroom because one of two things could happen. One, it could be incredibly successful and the students will learn a lot from a lesson. Or, two, it could completely fail and you as a teacher will be able to reflect on your teaching and develop a way to make it even better. Often times, I think it is a combination of these two things.

One thing that I did not value enough until this course was assessment. This is something that teachers, administrators, parents, and many people value in a classroom setting. While it is of course important to me, it has kind of has taken a back seat in my mind. As a pre-teacher, I love to focus on the great ideas I have to teach and the new and innovative ways to teach students. But what many administrators really emphasize is “How are we going to know that the students are learning?” or “What evidence do you have that the students are making progress?” I have quickly learned that everything I teach must have a way to assess the students. Many of the authors that we focused on such as Peter Johnson and Carl Anderson really provide good ideas to focus on when assessing students. For example, Anderson explains a lot about how to specifically link what we learn in an assessment to our instruction. How do we use what we learn and help carry this out while teaching our students?

These books really highlighted of ideas for me and they will become resources to me in the future. Johnson discussed how social imagination is used everyday in our society. I agree with him in saying that often times we take this for granted and do not consider this part of schooling. Social imagination is what helps make our society work. It is the foundation of what makes relationships work or not work. What many people do not understand is that there is a considerable difference in people’s ability to make sense of social cues, and to think through their implications, and these discrepancies have consequences for children’s lives for now and for their futures. Developing this social imagination is something that needs to be valued in a classroom. Although this not something that is tested directly on state tests, it is still something that students need to learn at a young age to be part of society.

I suppose one of the major things that I have learned is the need for a teacher to reflect on what is going on in his or her classroom. What needs to be changed? How do I personalize my instruction to this group of students? What do I need to do differently? These are all questions that the teacher must take time to address in order to teach in the best way possible. 

Technology Everyday...Allday...

Technology…..Where to begin?? The biggest word that I need to continually remind myself is FLEXIBILITY! We need to be aware that what is going on the tech world is continually changing. We as teachers need to be open to change! Do not shut out what is going on the tech world. It is worth paying attention to trust me. If you stop and think about it, what is one thing that kids latch on to? My answer would be technology and social media. How can we as teacher change our teaching to incorporate technology and social media to further their learning? Blogging, tweeting, using pintrest are just a few examples of ways to spark learning in a tech savvy way.

Using technology as a way for students to collaborate is a way that will help allow them to see different components of something come together? It also allows for a time for students to build off each other. 

Something I am interested in learning more about is how to use technology as a classroom management tool. There was something that I was recently introduced to called Class Dojo. This is a tool that helps classroom behavior. Class Dojo can reinforce behavior instantly from just a click from a smartphone, tablet, or computer. It also allows for teachers to engage students in minutes. I am interested in learning more about other tools that will help me mange my classroom because that is certainly one of my biggest fears when I enter the teaching world for real.

One thing that also scares me about diving into the education tech world is the fear that student are off task. There is certainly less monitoring for students. I think there is also a risk that students are taking from illegitimate  sources. I think this is something that we need to instill in out student’s brains as early as possible. When researching, students need to learn to filter there searches to make sure they are not getting false information. A good tool to use for this problem is to encourage students to start searching with Smart Search. This is a search engine that is designed to students. It is ad free, and offers credible resources for students to pull from.

One of the most remarkable ways I have seen technology used to help with differentiation. Differentiation. Differentiation. Differentiation. Talk about a teaching buzz word… But how to we accomplish differentiation? Technology is one of the answers. Technology can be used to push student learning and provide enrichment, as well as serve as assistive technology to students who may need help.

Technology in the classroom is something that is growing so much! I am beyond on board with trying to use technology. To me it is just about how do I use it in a way that will benefit the students the most! I want to provide them with the technology that will help them see the world in a different way. If used right, technology can make the difference between a good teacher and great teacher. The challenge is that it is up to the teacher to find a way to help the student use the technology in the best way possible to support their learning needs.

Instructional Conversations

Instruction conversations are great ways to teach students how to use dialogue in their learning. I believe teaching through the sharing of ideas through such dialogues can be empowering for students as a learning experience. Goldenberg states that an instructional conversation is a time students are encouraged to analyze reflect and critically think about a specific topic. This sounds so nice and fluffy on paper….BUT how do we do this? I want the students to think beyond the general descriptions of a book…. forget the summaries…. think critically.

Goldenberg recommends we start with having a thematic purpose. These talking points are essential to have planned out prior to the discussion happening. I can foresee myself intervening too much in an instructional conversation, especially if the conversation diverges from the topic that I want it to focus on. I think this is an important skill to have as an instructor; knowing when to intervene and refocus the students. I think is comes down to when the students take a topic and make it no longer related to the overall points that you are attempting to cover, at that point it is acceptable to refocus the students. Secondly, Goldenberg discusses the importance of activation. This activation component is essential in tapping into the students’ background knowledge. When the students make that connection between the new knowledge and something they previously knew they become more willing to share and give forth their opinions about topics.

Another part of an instructional conversation is when a teacher needs to directly teach the students. These are points when the teacher intervenes. Pull the students together and redirect them. Goldenberg also has a component he titles “promotion of more complex language and expression.” This is the cheerleader inside of us that comes out in an instructional conversation. The “great point, does any one have anything they would like to add on?” or the “Wow I never though of it that way, did anyone else think of it a little differently?” This is where the teacher helps the students get through the conversation. It is challenging to give the students wait time, but once there is an opportunity to promote an idea it is acceptable for the teacher dive right in! Finally elicitation is the last component Goldenberg discusses. This is where the teacher asks prompting questions such as, “How do you know?” or “Can you tell me more about that?” Overtime, hopefully these comments will come naturally for me.

Overall, this is a great technique that I am so excited to use with my students. I think it will be a skill that once mastered can be utilized in any subject matter! This is something that will first be useful in school but will be transferred to be a life long skill. Knowing how to build off each other and listen to other people in a discussion is something that will go a long way in life. We have to use tools like this in our classrooms! How exciting is it to teach our curriculum in a way that allows our children to build skills that will be useful for a lifetime.

Assessing our little writers. What's working? What's not?

When analyzing the students’ writing it was clear that students have very different strengths and weaknesses! I was working with a group of 5 students who are all the lowest readers in the class. Although it is important to note that their reading ability does now always align with writing ability, the two skills certainly go hand in hand in many ways. One strength of the writers is that they were very resourceful. I was working on the skill of summarizing with these egger to learn students. When I gave these second graders time to write they immediately reached for the book we were summarizing to utilize pictures and the context. This strength tells me that the students are used to being able to use their book to respond to a text….is this a habit that we support? Is it okay to allow the students to use a text when responding to it? After thinking about it, I believe that it is okay while they are learning the strategy of summarizing. My goal for these students is to get what they are thinking down on paper! I want to see as much paper pencil time as possible! But once the students understand more fully the  strategy I think it may be helpful to have them recall facts rather than looking the back up in the book. This will hopefully transition students to being more in tuned to the text from the beginning! We will work toward this by the end of the year!
Another strength of the writers is establishing the main ideas of the story. The book we were reading was about two girls who raced kites in a kite contest. The girls’ kites crashed and they decided to rebuild the kite together. After collaborating their ideas they were able to build a kite that won the competition. One student said, “Sarah and Lena both made kites!” and then another student responded by saying, “They were sad when their kites crashed.” This happened several times in our conversation about the book, where the students added on and built off other students’ responses. I think this conversation helped some of the students in knowing what to write. Most of students are able to discuss what happened in the story and then portray this in paper. When the class takes the time to discuss and model what they are looking for, they are more likely to have to spend less time on it later! This tells me that the content of the summary that they established was proficient. Having the main idea in a second grade summary is the primary thing we look for! I was pleased to see that each of the students had the main idea documented in their summary! YES!
Lastly the organization that the students had was very sequential and logical. I was so happy to see a clear beginning, middle and end! It was so great to see! The idea that they are able to see that one event leads to another is a great discovery as a teacher. We have also spent a lot of time working on cause and effect which is showing through in their ability to order events. By having this clear organization, it is obvious that they understand the idea that one event leads to another and there is a logical order of events in a summary.
It was interesting to see how the writing between students was different. Where one student wrote, “They made kites.” Another student wrote, “Sarah and Lena made kites over summer when they were board.” When I went back and conferenced with the student who wrote “They made kites,” I asked her, “How she could make this more visual? How can you paint a better picture of what was going on in the story? If I did not read this story how can you give me a better image of what happened?” After a conversation we did decide to rewrite the sentence to be, “Sarah and Lena were board when they were not in school anymore and made kites that they flew at the beach.” This was a great step in the right direction. I was so pleased that we developed this sentence! I then allowed this student to go through and read her summary again and find 2 more areas where she could make her writing MORE! I was determined to spend a little extra time with this student because they are the one that is struggling the most with this. I made an adapted individual learning plan for this student. Just as Anderson outlines in his book Assessing Writers he focuses on 4 essential parts 1. encompassing all aspects of a child as a writer 2. Using Information from Multiple Sources 3. Focusing on a few goals at a time and 4. Include appropriate goals. So for this student I focused on adding more detail to her summary. It was very surface and did not meet the criteria I was looking for. To do this I used information from the rubric, my cooperating teacher, as well as Anderson’s book. The main goals were to add more detail to the summary by being more descriptive and adding a visual image for the reader. We discussed many examples of descriptive writing versus not o descriptive writing. It was good to see this comparison.

 Overall when assessing the students’ writing it was great to focus on their strengths and to help them make strides as young writer! One thing that became really obvious to me and stood out from Anderson’s book was his quote “we are teaching the writer not the writing.” I think this is important to keep in mind when analyzing writing because we really are trying to find ways to help the writer achieve their goals in their writing! Must focus on the writer!

Assessing Students... Why so Important?

Something that has not occurred to me until reading Carl Anderson’s book is how similar we teach reading and writing. Sure they go hand in hand…. You can’t read if you can’t write. But from the teaching perspective we must truly treat writing with equal importance as reading. The first and most meaningful example that I took from Anderson’s book is the idea that we need to be conferencing with our students in their writing (just as we do in reading).  Growing up, I don’t think I ever really participated in a writing conference. It was mainly… turn in a writing assignment …wait a few days … and receive feedback when that writing assignment was returned. But why? This is so limiting. A face-to-face conference would be so much powerful. The teacher would benefit by seeing the student face to face and seeing if the student is actually understands her feedback. The student would benefit by getting direct feedback with more clarity then a few notes on a page.

Anderson focuses on asking, “What do we want students to do as writers?” We want our students to initiate their writing, write well, and take a piece of writing through the writing process. It is so essential to have goals for our students and make these clear to the students. Taking initiative in writing is the student writing for a purpose and writing for an audience that matters to the writer. A lifelong writer that writes well is one who communicates well, structures their writing, and has a voice in their writing. Finally one who can take their writing through the writing process shows that they are capable to edit and stay with a piece until it is at their very best work.

Anderson continues to outline how to conduct a writing conference. One of the major things that stuck out to me is the importance to start the conference on a positive note. This is important because the students can be a little nervous entering the one on one conference setting. (Although this will get better with time) But it is necessary to start the conference with the student feeling good and feel that they are valued as a student and writer. Additionally it is important the student is aware of the strategy that we are working to change. Focusing on too many things can be overwhelming for both the teacher and the student. Having a clear goal will help keep focus for both the student and teacher. The final element that I believe in is necessary is taking notes about the conference. After the conference, take only a couple minutes and reflect on what happened. This is useful because it is very important to reference previous accomplishments and refer to conferences that have taken place.

There are so many benefits to assessments that are important to understand as teachers. Assessments help us create a path for student learning for a group of students or an individual student. They also help us set precise specific goals to focus on in one on one instruction, small group mini lessons, and large group lessons.

Think aLOUD

Think Alouds are a new idea to me that will definitely become part of my toolbox as a teacher. The think aloud type that I wanted to focus on was a general gradual-release of responsibility. Here the responsibility and expertise of book is gradually exchanged from the teacher to the students.  The book I decided to do for this think aloud is The Mitten adapted and illustrated by Jan Brett. I chose this book because it was available to me in my classroom library and I knew it was a rich piece of literature that has fantastic illustrations.

This week one thing that the teacher was focusing on was sequencing. Sequencing can be oh so boring! So I tried to make the think aloud as interactive as possible.  I started out by introducing the sequencing to my student Kamren (changed name). Kamren was a 2^nd grade on level reader that had finished his work quickly, so I got the opportunity to work with him. I asked Kamren if he had worked on sequencing before and he gave me a confused look. After we went into a little more detail about what exactly sequencing is he was excited to tell me that he has worked on this strategy before. I asked Kamren why we would use sequencing and he said, “It helps when we are trying to tell someone what happened.” After a couple more prompting questions, Kamren said, “Also it is used when I am trying to think about the order that things happened.” I was satisfied with these responses, so I decided start the book and the gradual release process.

I told Kamren that I am going to start reading and I am going to show you what I am thinking as I read the text. So far everything was going as planned.. so far…? I thought everything was off to a smooth start and I began creating a conversation about the text as I read. For example, it the first couple pages, the boy Nikki’s, grandmother makes him mittens. I made a conversation by telling Kamren, “Wow those mitten’s look very warm and fluffy.” He responded by saying, “Yes they do.” We continued to page through the book and I would make connections to something that I was thinking about. It came very naturally for me. Kamren would often agree and nod his head, but I wouldn’t see a lot of conversation back. After reading through more than half the book, I asked Kamren to take over the reading. I was crossing my figures he could start conversing more now that he was reading…. But if didn’t go quite that perfectly. What did I do… flexibility!

One strategy that I intended to use more is the “read aloud/pause/write.” I modeled this at one point at the beginning of the story. I stopped and with Kamren wrote down what I was thinking about two events that were happening in a row. We quickly discussed how I used words such as “next, then, after” to describe the sequence of events. I think next time, I would try harder to scaffold Kamren to do this on his own when he was working more independently. I think I was so nervous that he wasn’t going to start thinking aloud that I forgot about scaffolding him to do this strategy on his own.  

This is one of my teaching believe… we have to role with the punches. I still wanted Kamren to get the meaning out of this lesson. So I started to ask prompting questions that had to do with sequential ordering? I also still intervened and tried to make my thinking visible. We finally started to move into a guided practice portion of the think aloud process. Kamren made comments like, “They have so many animals in the mitten!!” or “Jeez, I thought the mitten would have broken.” One comment that I was happy he made and gave me indication that we was understanding the ideal of sequencing is when he said, “First a mole goes into the mitten, then a rabbit, and now a hedge hog!! How many more can fit?” I loved listening to his remarks because soon I needed very few encouragers. He took more independence as we moved through the book.

Although initially I was very worried that Kamren was not catching onto the gradual release process. I realize I need to patient. I have to keep telling myself… “its okay…don’t freak out… don’t jump in too quickly!” He was a little hesitant possibly because he was not too familiar with the think aloud process. I was thrilled when he finally started to make statements that helped me see what he was thinking. This is what Wilhelm discusses as “talk-throughs.” A “talk through” is when the student responds to what is being discussed in the book. It started as mostly me doing the talk through but turned into Kamren doing more and more of this Sometimes they turned into mini-rants. But that way okay! I wanted to make an open and free environment where he was free to communicate what ever was going through his head!