What did students learn and which students struggled with the
lesson?
In this lesson, students learned what
“show don’t tell writing” is, and why it is important. They learned that when you show as
opposed to tell in your writing, you are giving the reader a chance to
visualize, or paint a picture in their mind about what is being written
about. Students learned that an
important piece of this style of writing is the inclusion of sensory details. There were some students that struggled
with this lesson, and those students were the ones who do not see writing in a
positive way. I noticed that it
was hard for those students to break through that barrier of disliking writing,
and so their learning suffered.
What are alternate reads (interpretations) of your students’
performance or products?
When looking at student performance
and products, it has become clearer to me that there are so many factors that I
need to take into consideration before I make the assumption that students are
not engaged, or not understanding.
Sometimes there are things going on with the student’s personal life that
have nothing to do with you or the way you are teaching, but are really
affecting the way that particular student is learning on a given day. I have realized that this kind of stuff
happens, especially with 10 year olds, and I need to really learn to not take
that personally, and to not let it drag me down while teaching the lesson. With students products, the reading of
directions has been an uphill battle.
As a teacher, when you model something, give clear expectations, and
read the directions with your students, it is hard to accept that some students
still did not perform well, not because they are not capable of doing so, but
because they chose not to read the directions, or they were still unclear of
what was expected of them. This
has been something that I have been struggling with, and I am really working on
things that I can do to improve this.
Also, a lot of the pieces of writing that I used to assess my students
were assignments that were done at home as homework due to time restraints in
school. I feel as if this is very important
to acknowledge when thinking about alternate interpretations, because sometimes
homework is forgotten, and rushed on the bus, or before class starts, or
hurried through because a student wanted to move onto a different
activity. This is something that
can really influence quality of work, and when something is rushed, it is not
an example of a student’s best possible work.
What did you learn about your students’ literacy practices that
extend beyond your objectives?
I learned that my students are passionate
about language arts, and that they all have the desire to share their ideas and
to share their writing with other people.
I learned that the dislike of writing comes not from the actual physical
act of writing, but in the restriction of ideas. I learned that giving students interesting topics to write about,
and putting up less restrictions and letting students choose what they would like
to write about opens up a lot more students to the idea of being passionate and
enthusiastic writers.
When and how will you re-teach the material to students who need
additional support?
The idea of showing and not telling
in your writing will be something that is touched on every single day for the
remainder of the unit. For
students needing additional support, I will give that to them on an individual
basis if I notice that they continue to struggle in the second piece of writing
that they will complete on Day 3.
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?
If I were to teach this lesson again,
I would have written a piece for the students to see that modeled an example of
show don’t tell writing for how I ate the orange. The reason why I did not take this step initially was
because I worried that I would write about something that I would not actually
end up doing when I ate the orange for the students to watch. After actually having the experience of
this lesson, I now understand that having that piece of writing to model for
them would have really helped to enforce the idea of how you can write about
any situation using the show don’t tell style of writing, and I think the
modeled example would have helped to clear up some confusion that students had
when I asked them to write about the experience that they all had about me
eating an orange.
What did you learn so far about implementing your ‘core
practice’ and what do you need to do to continue your professional learning?
I need to give students the opportunity
to actually take their pieces of writing that they did for my assessment purposes
and turn them into final drafts. In
order to really make the most out of this writing unit, I need to have the
opportunity to allow students to channel their enthusiasm and their new passion
about writing into a published piece that can be shared with others, because I really
now understand that sharing is a huge piece of writing, and if there is a chance
to share your writing with others, you will be a lot more motivated to produce high
quality work.
