Kelsey Inquiry 2 Part E

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.