Reflection to Beers and Probst's Webiniar

Mini Lesson Reflection

Last Monday, I gave a mini lesson on participial phrases. This lesson did not go the way I planned. 

One of the things I noticed (which was pointed out in the discussion) was that I didn't repeat "this is what a participial phrase is" enough. Actually, I didn't even hear myself telling the class what a participial phrase at all. I rehearsed it multiple times but when I went in front of the class, I forgot the most important piece of information. I think if I were to do this lesson over, I would have a slide dedicated to defining a participial phrase.

Another thing I would change is I would have a printout with the sentences (and now definition of a participial phrase) for the students to follow along with. My original lesson plan had the printout listed under materials but it slipped my mind. I would hope when I'm actually teaching in the future, I would review the materials I needed for class. 

The biggest problem I had with how I executed my lesson was the timing. When I practiced my lesson at home, I always pause to give my imaginary class time to answer my questions. My time is always nearly perfect when I present my lesson at home but when I get to class, I speed through the whole thing as if it was a race. I think this is half because I get nervous and half because I'm worried about running out of time. I have decided that in the future, whenever I am presenting a lesson, I will wear a watch to help me with the timing. This is something I've noticed many of my past teachers do but I never gave much thought as to why. 

When I revisit the lesson plan that I have written, I still like what I have written. However, I was a tad bit vague with my plan because I made some mental notes for things I wanted to talk about. I will not be making mental notes in the future because I think those notes go out the window as soon as I stepped in front of the class. 

There were some small things I would change and keep in mind for next time, like moving around the classroom more (rather than stand behind the computer as much as I did) and carefully read what my "students" have written down. 

Writing to teach, teaching to write.

One thing that every author we've read so far seems to agree on is that keeping a writing journal is important for students. It is a place for them to come up with ideas, reflect on their readings (and in life as well), and grow as readers and writers. I don't know whether high school was too long ago that I don't remember having a writing journal or if my teachers didn't ask us for one. Either way, I think it would have definitely helped me as a young writer. I remember my teachers asking me to brainstorm before writing and I just spent the duration staring at the paper sheet of paper in front of me. A journal/WRN would have help developed my writing tremendously.

How we ask students to write in their journals seem to be where the opinions begin to differ. Linda Rief asks her students to write for up to 3 minutes. Peter Smagorinsky asks his students to write at least five hundred words. Dr. Kajder has mentioned before that she prefers an allotted amount of time over the minimum word count. I can see the merit in both but I'm curious which method works better. Personally, when I have a time frame to write in, I spend a portion of my time looking at the clock. Of course, this is not something I want my future students to do but I feel like it is human nature. I look at the clock and get nervous because I always feel like I need time to write more. Even though I know I am wasting my precious few seconds looking at the clock, it is a habit I cannot help. However, not all students who are looking at the clock feel the same way. What if they are just riding the clock out in order to avoid doing more work then they need to? A minimum word count also has it negative effects such as the student's writing becoming focused and unauthentic due to length. This is an issue I think can't truly be answered.

Another concern I have is with confidentiality. Rief does not mention confidentiality at all. She reads through all of her students' journals and writes comments that may help the student form their quick writes into a longer draft. However, what if it is something the student is not comfortable with sharing? Smagorinsky gives his students the option of putting an X over the top of pages they don't want him to read. Smagorinsky's approach is great, but what if the student uses that excuse to not do their assignment? Should we give students an amount of X's they can put on top of a page? What if that one journal page could truly transform into something great? Great writing often asks us to confront the things that concern us the most, which could be very sensitive subjects. I think this is another issue that has two sides, both of which have great merit.

Perhaps both of my questions don't have answers. Everyone is different. No two students are the same. Perhaps different classes have to be given different guidelines for their WRN/journals and that is something we have to figure out for ourselves.

Reading Mini Lesson

When I first thought about becoming an English teacher, I thought about all the great things I've learned from literature. I often felt lonely when I was younger and reading was the one thing that always made me feel not so lonely. I didn't think much about teaching students how to read an informative, non-fiction text.

"Letter from a Birmingham Jail" could have been taught in many different ways. I still believe that teaching students to decipher the 5 W's is important but I wish we worked more on the literary devices MLK used that made the text so powerful. Because the essay worked as such a great persuasive piece, I think we should have focused more of attention on that aspect of the text. It was originally in our lesson plan but because we overestimated how much time we really had, we didn't get to the part of the plan. We might have been able to go through the 5 W's with just the word cloud alone and then dive into the text afterwards.

Professor Kajder made a point about how different the timing would be if we had actual 9th graders in the class. They need much more time to skim through the piece, more time to process information, and more time to understand the lesson. We might have been able to go through the whole lesson plan if we were making the entire lesson based the letter.

I think the word cloud was a good hook that prepared the students for the text they were about to read. I'm curious how actual 9th graders would interpret the words. Obviously graduate students who are familiar with a wide range of texts can piece the puzzle together quicker but I'm guessing 9th graders predictions would be somewhat different.

Overall, I think the biggest take away from this mini lesson for me was to manage time more wisely. I think as teachers, we have to decide whats most important and what students really need to learn and build from there.

How to become a Reader

My first question would go to Linda Rief. I would like to preface by saying I know exactly where she is coming from when she talked about her history as a reader. I, too, have a hard time finding time for leisure reading when there is so much more "important reading" to be done. I also truly love her take on book talks and is something I hope I can do in my classroom some day. But on to the question...

Linda Rief talks about allowing the students to read books of their own choice. This concept makes a lot of sense to me. Reading can become boring and a bit of a drag if I am constantly forced to read books that I don't enjoy, books that are too difficult, or books that I feel will never affect my life. I do believe that while it is important to know the Canon, there is much more out there to explore. You can't learn new ideas and concepts if you stick to the same old books all of the time; flexible readers lead to flexible minds. However, what do you do when you school tells you what books to teach in class? What do you do when you have an inflexible curriculum that doesn't allow you to let the students read on their own? I suppose I can assume that she is talking about independent reading but how does that help me get the students interesting in what we are reading in class, as opposed to only interested in only their independent reading? What if the students has as difficult time with reading (like Beers's students)? How will I get them to do independent reading that they can enjoy when they struggle with reading to start out with?

Since we are already talking about students who struggle with reading, I will move on to my next question (which is directed at Beers). When you have a student who struggles as much as George or Mike, how would you devote your time so that you can help them improve as readers but also focus on the rest of your class as well. Someone like Mike, who is not in anyway disabled but is missing what seems like fundamentals for reading, requires more attention that the rest of the students. It seems as though in order for him to catch up with the rest of the class, he needs someone to help him revisit the basics of reading in order to move on from decoding to retention and understanding. I would assume that Beers would meet with Mike's parents to address the problem and give them ways to help in at home. However, what if Mike's parents aren't that investing in Mike's ability to read or what if his parents simply don't have the resources? It is not that I think it is impossible, I just wonder how one would go about dividing the attention equally amongst students while not drawing attention to the fact that the students are at different reading levels?

My next question is also to Beers. With students like Sharamee, who don't have a problem decoding or reading out loud but still struggle as a good reader, how do you help them improve? Sharamee said that she couldn't hear the voice reading inside her head, but how do you make a student listen to the voice inside their head? Sharamee was facing retention and made it very obvious that she wanted to avoid independent reading. However, what if she didn't? What if she did the bare minimum to pass and she pretending like she did her independent reading? How would you identify a student in that case? I feel as though a student who can decode but still has a hard time with retention and understanding and tries the best to stay under the radar needs just as much help as students like Sharamee. 

Hook Lesson Reflection

Yikes! Seeing myself on video is even more terrifying than it sounds (and it already sounded pretty terrifying!). However, I wanna talk about what I got from the video. I would like to start off with what I would not change about my lesson.

First off, I would like to keep folding the sheet of paper with the poem into quarters. My main objective with the lesson was to teach literary devices and I wanted the students to find examples from the poem to express each literary device. I think that writing on the back of the poem forces the student to concentrate harder on the line than writing on a separate sheet of paper would. I would leave in the background information about the author of the poem because background information never hurts when trying to decipher poetry.  I would also still pass out the oranges (because who doesn't like oranges?).

Now for the things I would change about the lesson. The first thing I would change is reading the poem out loud. Since I wrote the lesson for ninth graders, I believe that they are more than capable to read the poem themselves. I would add in a review of what the literary devices are. Since I've taken out the reading out loud, I think I would replace it with using the oranges to help the students remember what each literary device is. For example, one of the categories was metaphor. I would ask the student to make up a metaphor using an orange.

I think there are some things I could do to improve the lesson. I think I could have spoken a little louder. I had a hard time hearing myself at points. If I had a class room full of fourteen-year-olds, I doubt that they would stay as quiet as my graduate classmates. I could have also made the purpose of the lesson more clear of the students so they know what to expect and what to look for in the poem.

Overall, this was my first ever lesson and there is definitely room for improvement!

What is "REAL" teacher planning?

This is what I original thought was teacher planning:

            “I would start off with re-familiarizing myself with the text. (Dr. Kajder has often times mentioned that she believes in doing the work with the students and I agree.) The next thing I would do is ask myself what I expect the student to gain from the text. From there, I would formulate questions that would (hopefully) stimulate a discussion with the students and gett them to formulate ideas based on the text.”

My idea of what lesson planning is rather vague and not all that well thought out. Then again, I am taking LLED 7408 for a reason: to learn how to plan.

I watched all but maybe one or two of the videos on Flipgrid and there are a few things that opened my eyes to planning. Let’s start off with the things that I found similar to my novice idea of teacher planning, since there aren’t too many.

I did notice a few people who said they start from the end and work their way back, such as Rachel and Seth. Also, Seth seems to work in a much smaller scale, working week to week as he goes. He said he spends about three hours every Sunday working out his week’s plan, which is what I thought planning was.

Now, there are many things that I did not put into consideration for planning. I wasn’t thinking about long term planning. I only thought about lesson-to-lesson planning, which is only a scratch on the surface of planning. Mary, the social studies teacher, plans out everything. She puts into consideration snow days, absences, and course work that may take longer than others. She’s very detailed where as someone like Lisa is more “fluid” in her planning. I also did not put into consideration the template or device I would use for my lesson planning. Most of the teachers seem to only use one template, which is probably what I would think to do. However, Frank brings up the idea of using different platforms for his planning. He uses a template for his broad lesson planning and then blackboard for his more detailed planning.

Overall, I think the one thing that shocked me the most from listening to all of the teachers came from Lisa who said teacher planning doesn’t get any easier.