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.

September 16 Blog Post by Catie Watson

As I was reading Routman’s advice on teaching writing, I realized that there is a lot more to this subject area than I had previously thought. In order to be an effective writing teacher, I will need to understand the areas of writing that should be covered in 4th grade, as well as the Common Core Standards. As of right now, all I know about what is expected of my students is that they will need to write an informational, narrative, and persuasive pieces. Learning about the other skills that I will be teaching is crucial in order for me to effectively teach writing. I hope to develop my teaching skills by learning how to incorporate the basic writing standards and skills into the overall lesson goals. I also want to learn how to effectively monitor and keep records of my student’s writing. Since there are so many important aspects to writing, being able to keep track of each student’s individual progress is extremely important in order to help them improve their writing skills. I have already had several conversations with my MT about writing conferences, and I am excited to learn from her about how to utilize these rare one-on-one interactions with my students.

Some professional dilemmas I might encounter if I were to follow Routman’s advice is that my school has a writing curriculum that teachers are required to follow. The three pieces that I mentioned before (informational, narrative, and persuasive) are the main components of the curriculum and do not leave much time for other writing opportunities. Another dilemma that I would encounter is that much of the beginning of the year is spent on preparing for the MEAP test. Preparing for this test means that many writing skills are crammed into quick lessons in hopes that the students will be able to write a piece of work that scores high enough on the MEAP.

One way I hope to alter the writing curriculum is to have the students keep a writing notebook/journal. In this notebook, students could explore many different types of writing, genres, and stories. This would allow them to experiment with different types of writing other than informational, narrative, and persuasive. The only problem I foresee with this idea is that there will not be enough time allotted for mini-lessons that model and teach the various types of writing for my students to practice in their notebooks. I plan to speak with my MT and attempt to develop a plan that can incorporate these notebooks into our daily writing lessons.

Initial Blog Post by Caroline Paredes

As a first time, full-time teacher, I imagine facing quite a few professional dilemmas this internship year. Having never been so fully exposed to a classroom setting, I expect that there will be several spontaneous occasions where I am placed in a position that requires me to choose “the lesser of two evils” in regards to my students. Some may not be as serious, for example, when earlier this week I was left to decide whether or not I should send a child who has been known to take excessive bathroom visitations to the restroom after asking me for the first time that hour. While I did not think much of it at first, I was left to wonder what sort of message was being sent to this child after she ignored my instruction and asked my MT to use the restroom, and was then allowed to go (my MT did not know she had asked me first). It made me wonder just how strict I should be with my students. If I am not as strict, I imagine that they will not like me very much and will not be terribly motivated to do the assignments I provide them with (or will be motivated purely out of fear, which I do not want, as I do not want them to form negative associations with school). If I am too kind, friendly, and easy going however, I will have students who end up seeing me more as a friend as opposed to an authority figure, and I do not imagine that they will have much respect for me or my teaching. I am still finding it hard to find that happy medium where the students see me as a likable teacher who they respect, but who they also see as a safe contact person.

I also wonder a lot about how I am going to ensure that I am reaching ALL of my students, and not just those who are able to listen and follow direction at all times. For example, if I have one student who is not understanding the material and is disruptive and must be worked with at an individual level in order for them to understand the material, and the rest of the class is ready and eager to learn, when (or do) I choose to ignore or excuse the child who is being disruptive (and who will then, consequently, not learn any more of the material) so that I may focus my energy on the students who are ready to learn? I also imagine encountering several dilemmas in regards to how to grade the students in my classroom who are ESL learners or special education students in relation to the general education students (i.e. do I grade the students on a similar rubric, or do I completely alter the rubrics for these children?). Dealing with parents should also bring about quite a few dilemmas, for example, if a parent complains that their child has too much homework, do I lower the amount of homework to keep the parent and child happy, and risk that they do not gain practice in as much as I want them to, or do I keep it as it is and anger the parent and risk that the grades of the child (who in actuality, really can’t do that much homework due to their learning capability or time restrictions) suffer?

In regards to my current teaching methods, I feel very confident in my ability to plan creative and meaningful lessons for my students (or instructor, or classmates). I am also quite confident in my ability to assess my students, as we have covered this quite extensively in my TE courses as well as my TESOL courses, and I have also acquired several great resources in regards to student assessment during my undergraduate years.

Areas which I feel I need to learn and practice more in the classroom include classroom management and general execution of my lessons. These are both areas in which I have struggled with in the past and which I feel have not been thoroughly addressed in past courses. Considering all of the teaching that I will be doing this year and the amount of time spent instructing my class as a lead instructor, I imagine that I will be getting plenty of experience in these two areas. My two mentor teachers are also great resources and I have already been getting tons of advice and ideas from them in terms of how to properly execute a lesson and also how to best manage classroom behavior.