Target Area Questions - Kelsey Schmitt - 9/27

1. Describe your target area for guided lead teaching.

Writing Instruction is the target area with conferences being the core practice.

2. Approximately how much time per day is allotted for your instruction in this area?

             Writer’s workshop is 55 min a day, four days a week

3. Which Common Core State Standard(s) will you work toward?

W4.4 I can develop and write different pieces with appropriate organization based on purpose and audience

W4.5 I can develop and improve writing by planning, revising and editing

4. How will teaching in this target area provide opportunities for students to learn important content and/or skills that relate to their lives? In what ways does this learning include learning literacy, learning about literacy, and/or learning through literacy?

Writing Instruction should connect to students’ lives. Mini lessons should focus around building personal connections that will help the students to create stronger writing pieces. They are learning how to create their own literacy to share their thoughts with others. And use literacy (various texts) to model the type of writing we want them to create. For example since they are writing narrative pieces now, we have sharing different narrative texts with the students during our mini lessons.

5. What types of classroom talk take place within this target area? To what extent is the talk teacher-led, student-led, or focused on higher-level thinking? What norms for interaction would you like to build within your classroom as you teach in this target area (e.g., see ideas in Chapter 6 of Strategies that Work, the Berne & Clark 2008 article, or draw from some of the readings done in TE 402 on classroom talk)?

           

I think that the talk is fairly well balanced in our writing instruction. The mini lesson might be more teacher-led with student participation and sharing. I think as the year progresses the goal will be to move to more student led discussions. However it is important that we are giving students time to write and time to share as well.  As for higher-level thinking, I think that the mini lessons are striving to get students to think harder about the writing process. I want students to be able to look at different types of writing techniques that other authors use and apply it to their own writing. One of the norms that I would like to continue to cultivate is a safe-space for sharing writing. I don’t want my students to be afraid to share or feel they will be judged and criticized by their peers in a negative way. At the same time I want them to be able to point out what is strong and what is weak in their own writing, so they can strive to get better. I do not want to over praise and say that everyone’s pieces are perfect all of the time.

6. Which ‘core practice’ do you want to work on developing/improving as you teach in this target area (refer to document “Resources for Developing Core Practices”)?  How will focusing on this core practice contribute to your own professional learning?

           

I want to focus on writing conferences at my ‘core practice’. I think that this will be very beneficial to my own professional learning because I think that many schools are moving towards having writing conferences and workshops. It is a nice time to give each student some one on one attention, which does not happen very often during the typical school day. You can really tailor instruction very specifically for each student.

7. What resources within the community, neighborhood, school district, school or classroom do you have to work with in this target area?

We use Lucy Calkin’s Writer’s Workshop as well as supplements from Café. My teacher also uses “Strategies that Work”” as resource too. I think it is great that I have access to so many resources in the classroom and am not limited to one thing.

8. What additional resources do you need to obtain?

           

I can’t think of any other resources that I need yet.  :)

9. How will you pre-assess your students in your target area?

Writing conferences could be difficult to assess so I think our first writing conference could be used as a pre-assessment to see where they are at when we start compared to farther down the road after multiple conferences.

10. What else will you need to find out about all students in your class to help you develop lesson plans for your Guided Lead Teaching?

I could maybe make a survey to see how they feel about writing. I would also want to see some other samples of their writing to see a starting point, which I have already seen from their first spiral notebook entry.

11. What else do you need/want to learn about the ‘core practice’ to support your planning and teaching?

I want to learn more about setting up initial writing conferences and I want to learn more about how to differentiate conferences for different leveled writers. No two conferences would really look the same.

12. What concerns, if any, do you have about planning and teaching your unit?

           

My concern would be just my anxiety that the conferences would fail and worrying that I wasted my students and my own time.  I really want my students to get something out of the time together... I am sure after the first few conferences I will feel more comfortable and my nerves will calm.